Book of Longing

Leonard Cohen

Penguin UK (2006)

Rating:

★★★★☆

Tags:

Canadian Poetry, American, Literary Criticism, Poetry, General

Canadian Poetryttt Americanttt Literary Criticismttt Poetryttt Generalttt

Leonard Cohen is one of the great writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Book of Longing is Cohen’s eagerly awaited new collection of poems, following his highly acclaimed 1984 title, Book of Mercy, and his hugely successful 1993 publication, Stranger Music, a Globe and Mail national bestseller. Book of Longing contains erotic, playful, and provocative line drawings and artwork on every page, by the author, which interact in exciting and unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is timeless, meditative, and at times darkly humorous. The book brings together all the elements that have brought Leonard Cohen’s artistry with language worldwide recognition.From the Hardcover edition.

PENGUIN BOOKS

BOOK OF LONGING

LEONARD

COHEN

Book of

Longing

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road,

Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 2006

First published in Great Britain by Viking 2006

Published in Penguin Books 2007

9

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

Copyright © Leonard Cohen, 2006

Drawings and decorations copyright © Leonard Cohen, 2006

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN: 978-0-14-190317-0

for Irving Layton

THE BOOK OF LONGING

I can’t make the hills

The system is shot

I’m living on pills

For which I thank G-d

I followed the course

From chaos to art

Desire the horse

Depression the cart

I sailed like a swan

I sank like a rock

But time is long gone

Past my laughing stock

My page was too white

My ink was too thin

The day wouldn’t write

What the night pencilled in

My animal howls

My angel’s upset

But I’m not allowed

A trace of regret

For someone will us

What I couldn’t be

My heart will be hers

Impersonally

She’ll step on the path

She’ll see what I mean

My will cut in half

And freedom between

For less than a second

Our lives will collide

The endless suspended

The door open wide

Then she will be born

To someone like you

What no one has done

She’ll continue to do

I know she is coming

I know she will look

And that is the longing

And this is the book

MY LIFE IN ROBES

After a while

You can’t tell

If it’s missing

A woman

Or needing

A cigarette

And later on

If it’s night

Or day

Then suddenly

You know

The time

You get dressed

You go home

You light up

You get married

HIS MASTER’S VOICE

After listening to Mozart

(which I often did)

I would always

Carry a piano

Up and down

Mt. Baldy

And I don’t mean

A keyboard

I mean a full-sized

Grand piano

Made of cement

Now that I am dying

I don’t regret

A single step

ROSHI AT 89

Roshi’s very tired,

he’s lying on his bed

He’s been living with the living

and dying with the dead

But now he wants another drink

(will wonders never cease?)

He’s making war on war

and he’s making war on peace

He’s sitting in the throne-room

on his great Original Face

and he’s making war on Nothing

that has Something in its place

His stomach’s very happy

The prunes are working well

There’s no one going to Heaven

and there’s no one left in Hell

– Mt. Baldy, 1996

ONE OF MY LETTERS

I corresponded with a famous rabbi

but my teacher caught sight of one of my letters

and silenced me.

“Dear Rabbi,” I wrote him for the last time,

“I do not have the authority or understanding

to speak of these matters.

I was just showing off.

Please forgive me.

Your Jewish brother,

Jikan Eliezer.”

YOU’D SING TOO

You’d sing too

if you found yourself

in a place like this

You wouldn’t worry about

whether you were as good

as Ray Charles or Edith Piaf

You’d sing

You’d sing

not for yourself

but to make a self

out of the old food

rotting in the astral bowel

and the loveless thud

of your own breathing

You’d become a singer

faster than it takes

to hate a rival’s charm

and you’d sing, darling

you’d sing too

S.O.S. 1995

Take a long time with your anger,

sleepyhead.

Don’t waste it in riots.

Don’t tangle it with ideas.

The Devil won’t let me speak,

will only let me hint

that you are a slave,

your misery a deliberate policy

of those in whose thrall you suffer,

and who are sustained

by your misfortune.

The atrocities over there,

the interior paralysis over here –

Pleased with the better deal?

You are clamped down.

You are being bred for pain.

The Devil ties my tongue.

I’m speaking to you,

‘friend of my scribbled life.’

You have been conquered by those

who know how to conquer invisibly.

The curtains move so beautifully,

lace curtains of some

sweet old intrigue:

the Devil tempting me

to turn away from alarming you.

So I must say it quickly:

Whoever is in your life,

those who harm you,

those who help you;

those whom you know

and those whom you do not know –

let them off the hook,

help them off the hook.

Recognize the hook.

You are listening to Radio Resistance.

WHEN I DRINK

When I drink

the $300 scotch

with Roshi

it quenches every thirst

A song comes to my lips

a woman lies down with me

and every desire

invites me to curl up naked

in its dripping jaws

No more, I cry, no more

but Roshi fills my glass again

and new passions consume me

new appetites

For instance

I fall into a tulip

(and never hit the bottom)

or I hurtle through the night

in sweaty sexual union

with someone about twice the size

of the Big Dipper

When I eat meat with Roshi

the four-legged animals

don’t cry any more

and the two-legged animals

don’t try to fly away

and the exhausted salmon

come home to my hand

and Roshi’s wolf

biting at its broken chain

creates a sensation

in the cabin

by making friends with everyone

When I chow down with Roshi

and the Ballantine flows

the pine trees inch into my bosom

the great boring grey boulders

of Mt. Baldy

creep into my heart

and they all get fed

with the delicious fat

and the white cheese popcorn

or whatever it is

they’ve wanted all these years

BETTER

better than darkness

is fake darkness

which swindles you

into necking with

someone’s antique

cousin

better than banks

are false banks

where you change

all your rough money

into legal tender

better than coffee

is blue coffee

which you drink

in your last bath

or sometimes waiting

for your shoes

to be dismantled

better than poetry

is my poetry

which refers

to everything

that is beautiful and

dignified, but is

neither of these itself

better than wild

is secretly wild

as when I am in

the darkness of

a parking space

with a new snake

better than art

is repulsive art

which demonstrates

better than scripture

the tiny measure

of your improvement

better than darkness

is darkless

which is inkier, vaster

more profound

and eerily refrigerated

filled with caves

and blinding tunnels

in which appear

beckoning dead relatives

and other religious

paraphernalia

better than love

is wuve

which is more refined

superbly erotic

tiny serene people

with huge genitalia

but lighter than thought

comfortably installed

on an eyelash of mist

and living grimly

ever after

cooking, gardening

and raising kids

better than my mother

is your mother

who is still alive

while mine

is not alive

but what am I saying!

forgive me mother

better than me

are you

kinder than me

are you

sweeter smarter faster

you you you

prettier than me

stronger than me

lonelier than me

I want to get

to know you

better and better

– Mt. Baldy, 1996

THE LOVESICK MONK

I shaved my head

I put on robes

I sleep in the corner of a cabin

sixty-five hundred feet up a mountain

It’s dismal here

The only thing I don’t need

is a comb

– Mt. Baldy, 1997

TO A YOUNG NUN

This undemanding love

that our staggered births

have purchased for us –

You in your generation,

I in mine.

I am not the one

you are looking for.

You are not the one

I’ve stopped looking for.

How sweetly time

disposes of us

as we go arm in arm

over the Bridge of Details:

Your turn to chop.

My turn to cook.

Your turn to die for love.

My turn to resurrect.

OTHER WRITERS

Steve Sanfield is a great haiku master.

He lives in the country with Sarah,

his beautiful wife,

and he writes about the small things

which stand for all things.

Kyozan Joshu Roshi,

who has brought hundreds of monks

to a full awakening,

addresses the simultaneous

expansion and contraction

of the cosmos.

I go on and on

about a noble young woman

who unfastened her jeans

in the front seat of my jeep

and let me touch

the source of life

because I was so far from it.

I’ve got to tell you, friends,

I prefer my stuff to theirs.

ROSHI

I never really understood

what he said

but every now and then

I find myself

barking with the dog

or bending with the irises

or helping out

in other little ways

MEDICINE

My medicine

Has many contrasting flavours.

Engrossed in, or perplexed by

The differences between them,

The patient forgets to suffer.

TRUE SELF

True Self, True Self

has no will –

It’s free from “Kill”

or “Do not kill”

but while I am

a novice still

I do embrace

with all my will

the First Commitment

“Do not kill”

THE COLLAPSE OF ZEN

When I can wedge my face

into the place

and struggle with my breathing

as she brings her eager fingers down

to separate herself,

to help me use my whole mouth

against her hungriness,

her most private of hungers –

why should I want to be enlightened?

Is there something that I missed?

Have I forgotten yesterday’s mosquito

or tomorrow’s hungry ghost?

When I can roam this hill with a knife in my back

caused by too much drinking of Chateau Latour

and spill my heart into the valley

of the lights of Caguas

and freeze in fear as the watchdog

comes drooling out of the bushes

and refuses to recognize me

and there we are, yes, bewildered

as to who should kill the other first –

and I move and it moves,

and it moves and I move,

why should I want to be enlightened?

Did I leave something out?

Was there some world I failed to embrace?

Some bone I didn’t steal?

When Jesus loves me so much that blood

comes out of his heart

and I climb a metal ladder

into the hole in his bosom

which is caused by sorrow as big as China

and I enter the innermost room wearing white clothes

and I entreat and I plead:

“Not this one, Sir. Not that one, Sir. I beg you, Sir.”

and I look through His eyes

as the helpless are shit on again

and the tender blooming nipple of mankind

is caught in the pincers

of power and muscle and money –

why should I seek enlightenment?

Did I fail to recognize some cockroach?

Some vermin in the ooze of my majesty?

When ‘men are stupid and women are crazy’

and everyone is asleep in San Juan and Caguas

and everyone is in love but me

and everyone has a religion and a boyfriend

and a great genius for loneliness –

When I can dribble over all the universes

and undress a woman without touching her

and run errands for my urine

and offer my huge silver shoulders

to the pinhead moon –

When my heart is broken as usual

over someone’s evanescent beauty

and design after design

they fade like kingdoms with no writing

and, look, I wheeze my way

up to the station of Sahara’s

incomparable privacy

and churn the air into a dark cocoon

of effortless forgetting –

why should I shiver on the altar of enlightenment?

why should I want to smile forever?

EARLY MORNING AT MT. BALDY

Alarm awakened me at 2:30 a.m.:

got into my robes

kimono and hakama

modelled after the 12th-century

archer’s costume:

on top of this the koroma

a heavy outer garment

with impossibly large sleeves:

on top of this the ruksu

a kind of patchwork bib

which incorporates an ivory disc:

and finally the four-foot

serpentine belt

that twists into a huge handsome knot

resembling a braided challah

and covers the bottom of the ruksu:

all in all

about 20 pounds of clothing

which I put on quickly

at 2:30 a.m.

over my enormous hard-on

LEAVING MT. BALDY

I came down from the mountain

after many years of study

and rigorous practice.

I left my robes hanging on a peg

in the old cabin

where I had sat so long

and slept so little.

I finally understood

(some of them practitioners)

I had no gift

for Spiritual Matters.

‘Thank You, Beloved’

I heard a heart cry out

as I entered the stream of cars

on the Santa Monica Freeway,

westbound for L.A.

A number of people

have begun to ask me angry questions

about The Ultimate Reality.

I suppose it’s because

they don’t like to see

old Jikan smoking.

– 1999

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

Then a lot of things happened. I was struck on the head by an atheist. I never recovered my sense of confidence. Even today I am frightened by the smallest things. Old Mother Hubbard moved into the wound and produced her brood. For many years my head was laced up. I pretended to help everyone.

I sobered up. I faced my misery. Pine trees appeared, grey mountains, misty vistas in the early morning, people with interesting lives. G-d, your life is interesting, I never stopped saying. I never stopped shaking my head in convivial disbelief.

There’s so much I want to tell you. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I learned to skin a rabbit with very few incisions and a lot of elbow grease. Easter is my big season. The whole thing comes off in one swoop and you stuff it with Kleenex and sell it.

Saturday night really is, as they say, ‘the loneliest night of the week.’ I hunker down with my radio and a few balls of twine, in case I want to tie something up. I let the cabin get very cold and I rejoice in my good fortune. Sometimes a spider will descend on its hideous wet thread and threaten my hard-earned disinterest.

My advice is highly valued. For instance, don’t piss on a large pine cone. It may not be a pine cone. If you are not clear about which spiders are poisonous, kill them all. The daddy longlegs is not a true spider: it actually belongs to the Seratonio crime family. Although insects value their lives, and even though their relentless industry is an example for all of us, they rarely have a thought about death, and when they do, it is not accompanied by powerful emotions, as it is with you and me. They hardly discriminate between life and death. In this sense they are like mystics, and like mystics, many are poisonous. It is difficult to make love to an insect, especially if you are well endowed. As for my own experience, not one single insect has ever complained. If you are not sure which mystics are poisonous, it is best to kill the one you come across with a blow to the head using a hammer, or a shoe, or a large old vegetable, such as a petrified giant daikon radish.

– Mt. Baldy, 1997

THE PARTY WAS OVER THEN TOO

When I was about fifteen

I followed a beautiful girl

into the Communist Party of Canada.

There were secret meetings

and you got yelled at

if you were a minute late.

We studied the McCarran Act

passed by the stooges in Washington

and the Padlock Law

passed by their lackeys in colonized Quebec;

and they said nasty shit

about my family

and how we got our money.

They wanted to overthrow

the country that I loved

(and served, as a Sea Scout).

And even the good people

who wanted to change things,

they hated them too

and called them social fascists.

They had plans for criminals

like my uncles and aunties

and they even had plans

for my poor little mother

who had slipped out of Lithuania

with two frozen apples

and a bandana full of monopoly money.

They never let me get near the girl

and the girl never let me get near the girl.

She became more and more beautiful

until she married a lawyer

and became a social fascist herself

and very likely a criminal too.

But I admired the Communists

for their pig-headed devotion

to something absolutely wrong.

It was years before I found

something comparable for myself:

I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots

who considered themselves

the Marines of the spiritual world.

It’s just a matter of time:

We’ll be landing this raft

on the Other Shore.

We’ll be taking that beach

on the Other Shore.

THIS IS IT

This is it

I’m not coming after you

I’m going to lie down for half an hour

This is it

I’m not going down

on your memory

I’m not rubbing my face in it any more

I’m going to yawn

I’m going to stretch

I’m going to put a knitting needle

up my nose

and poke out my brain

I don’t want to love you

for the rest of my life

I want your skin

to fall off my skin

I want my clamp

to release your clamp

I don’t want to live

with this tongue hanging out

and another filthy song

in the place

of my baseball bat

This is it

I’m going to sleep now darling

Don’t try to stop me

I’m going to sleep

I’ll have a smooth face

and I’m going to drool

I’ll be asleep

whether you love me or not

This is it

The New World Order

of wrinkles and bad breath

It’s not going to be

like it was before

eating you

with my eyes closed

hoping you won’t get up

and go away

It’s going to be something else

Something worse

Something sillier

Something like this

only shorter

THIS ISN’T CHINA

Hold me close

and tell me what the world is like

I don’t want to look outside

I want to depend on your eyes

and your lips

I don’t want to feel anything

but your hand

on the old raw bumper

I don’t want to feel anything else

If you love the dead rocks

and the huge rough pine trees

Okay I like them too

Tell me if the wind

makes a pretty sound

I’ll close my eyes and smile

Tell me if it’s a good morning

or a clear morning

Tell me what the fuck

kind of morning it is

and I’ll buy it

And get the dog

to stop whining and barking

This isn’t China

nobody’s going to eat it

Okay go if you must

I’ll create the cosmos

by myself

I’ll let it all stick to me

every dismal pine cone

every boring pine needle

And I’ll broadcast my affection

from this shaven dome

360 degrees

to all the dramatic vistas

to all the mists and snows

that move across

the shining mountains

to the women bathing

in the stream

and combing their hair

on the roofs

to the voiceless ones

who have petitioned me

from their surprising silence

to the poor in heart

though they be rich

to all the thought-forms

and leaking mental objects

that you get up here

at the end of your ghostly life

– after a photo by Hazel Field

TAKANAWA PRINCE HOTEL BAR

Slipping down into the Pure Land

into the Awakened State of Drunk

into the furnace blue Heart of the

one one one true Allah the Beloved

Companion of Dangerous Moods –

Slipping down into the 27 Hells

of my own religion my own sweet

dark religion of drunk religion

my bended knee of Poetry my robes

my bowl my scourge of Poetry

my final circumcision after

the circumcision of the flesh

and the circumcision of the heart

and the circumcision of the yearning

to Return to be Redeemed

to be Washed to be Forgiven Again

the Final Circumcision the Final

and Great Circumcision –

Broken down awhile

and cowarding

in the blasting rays

of Hideous Enlightenment

but now finally surrendered to the Great

Resignation of Poetry

and not the kind of Wise Experience

or the false kisses of Competitive

Insight, but my own sweet dark

religion of Poetry my booby prize

my sandals and my shameful prayer

my invisible Mexican candle

my useless oils to clean the house

and remove my rival’s spell

on my girlfriend’s memory –

O Poetry my Final Circumcision:

All the pain was in fearing

and ignoring the girl’s voice

and the girl’s touch and the girl’s

fragrant humbling girlishness

which was lost three wars ago –

And O my love I love you again

I am your dog your cat

your Cleopatran snake

I am bleeding painlessly

from the Final Formless Circumcision

as I push up your dress a little way

and kiss your miraculously

lactating knee

And may all of you who watch

and G-d forbid!

are in a suffering predicament

as I go sliding down to Love –

may you speedily be embraced by

the girlishness of your own

dark girlish religion

SEISEN IS DANCING

Seisen has a long body.

Her shaved head

threatens the skylight

and her feet go down

into the apple cellar.

When she dances for us

at one of our infrequent

celebrations,

the dining hall,

with its cargo of weightless monks

and nuns,

bounces around her hips

like a Hula Hoop.

The venerable old pine trees

crack out of sentry duty

and get involved,

as do the San Gabriel Mountains

and the flat cities

of Claremont, Upland

and the Inland Empire.

Ocean speaks to ocean

saying, What the hell,

let’s go with it, rouse ourselves.

The Milky Way undoes its spokes

and cleaves to Seisen’s haunches,

as do the worlds beyond,

and worlds unborn,

not to mention darkest holes

of brooding anti-matter,

and random flying mental objects

like this poem,

fucking up the atmosphere.

It’s all going round her hips,

and what her hips enclose;

it’s all lit up by her face,

her ownerless expression.

And then there’s this aching fool

over here, no, over here

who thinks that

Seisen’s still a woman

who’s trying to find a place to stand

where Seisen isn’t Dancing.

MOVING INTO A PERIOD

We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind. The family will appear again as the Foundation, much honoured, much praised, but those of us who have been pierced by other possibilities, we will merely go through the motions, albeit the motions of love. The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.

You and I, who yearn for blameless intimacy, we will be unwilling to speak even the first words of inquisitive delight, for fear of reprisals. Everything desperate will live behind a joke. But I swear that I will stand within the range of your perfume.

How severe seems the moon tonight, like the face of an Iron Maiden, instead of the usual indistinct idiot.

If you think Freud is dishonoured now, and Einstein, and Hemingway, just wait and see what is to be done with all that white hair, by those who come after me.

But there will be a Cross, a sign, that some will understand; a secret meeting, a warning, a Jerusalem hidden in Jerusalem. I will be wearing white clothes, as usual, and I will enter The Innermost Place as I have done generation upon generation, to entreat, to plead, to justify. I will enter the chamber of the Bride and the Bridegroom, and no one will follow me.

Have no doubt, in the near future we will be seeing and hearing much more of this sort of thing from people like myself.

MY CONSORT

There is this huge woman,

(O G-d she’s beautiful)

this huge woman

who, even though she is all women,

has a very specific character;

this huge woman

who sometimes comes to me

very early in the morning

and plucks me out of my skin!

We ‘roll around heaven’

several miles above the pine trees

and there’s no space between us,

but we’re not One

or anything like that.

We’re two huge people,

two immense bodies

of tenderness and delight,

with all the pleasures felt and magnified

to match our size.

Whenever this happens

I am usually ready to forgive everyone

who doesn’t love me enough

including you, Sahara,

especially you.

HISTORIC CLAREMONT VILLAGE

I don’t remember

lighting this cigarette

and I don’t remember

if I’m here alone

or waiting for someone.

I don’t remember when

I’ve ever seen so many

beautiful men and women

walking back and forth

in Historic Claremont Village.

I must have been working out

because I don’t remember

how I got these muscles;

and this serene expression:

I must have done my time

reflecting on the bullshit.

Children are pulled quickly

past my bench

but the young are deeply

interested

in the fate

of this unusually bulky presence

in their secret cemeteries,

and they twist around

to look back at me.

The bench says,

“You’re going to blow away.”

The wallet says,

“You’re sixty-two.”

The seven-storey

Nissan Pathfinder says,

“Try to put your key

in that silver place behind

the steering wheel.

It’s called the ignition.”

– March 2, 1997

DISTURBED THIS MORNING

Ah. That.

That’s what I was so disturbed

about this morning:

my desire has come back,

and I want you again.

I was doing so fine,

I was above it all.

The boys and girls were beautiful

and I was an old man, loving everyone.

And now I want you again,

I want your absolute attention,

your underwear rolled down in a hurry

still hanging on one foot,

and nothing on my mind

but to be inside

the only place

that has

no inside,

and no outside.

BODY OF LONELINESS

She entered my foot with her foot

and she entered my waist with her snow.

She entered my heart saying,

“Yes, that’s right.”

And so the Body of Loneliness

was covered from without,

and from within

the Body of Loneliness was embraced.

Now every time I try to draw a breath

she whispers to my breathlessness,

“Yes, my love, that’s right, that’s right.”

ALL MY NEWS

1.

I was not meant

to be renown

in the present

market town,

but in the future

some may find

what might be used

to change a mind

from slaughter

in the name of peace

to honouring

complexities,

and thus influence

politics

with deeper balance

deeper checks.

And no one has

to be afraid

when on this Path

the deal is made.

2.

Look on low

look on high,

see with Love’s

inhuman eye

not only charge

of opposites

(the broken heart

the healing fix),

but what engenders

every turn –

the leader on her

knees will learn.

And he who’s sick

with heavy thought

will cherish it

and fold his cot.

3.

Do not decode

these cries of mine –

They are the road,

and not the sign.

Nor deconstruct

my drugless high –

I’m sober but

I like to fly.

Then quickened with

my open talk,

you need not pick

the ancient lock.

4.

Mystery now,

and now Revealed

I bend to Thee

my will to yield,

and whisper here

my gratitude

for every tear

of restless mood;

Who let me breach

the walls of time

so I could touch

the ones to come

with wisdom that

my parents spoke

(established on an anecdote),

and shorthand of

the unborn mind

with Graceful effort

all combined.

5.

Undeciphered

let my song

rewire circuits

wired wrong,

and with my jingle

in your brain,

allow the Bridge

to arch again.

YOU ARE RIGHT, SAHARA

You are right, Sahara. There are no mists, or veils, or distances. But the mist is surrounded by a mist; and the veil is hidden behind a veil; and the distance continually draws away from the distance. That is why there are no mists, or veils, or distances. That is why it is called The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. It is here that The Traveller becomes The Wanderer, and The Wanderer becomes The One Who Is Lost, and The One Who Is Lost becomes The Seeker, and The Seeker becomes The Passionate Lover, and The Passionate Lover becomes The Beggar, and The Beggar becomes The Wretch, and The Wretch becomes The One Who Must Be Sacrificed, and The One Who Must Be Sacrificed becomes The Resurrected One, and The Resurrected One becomes The One Who Has Transcended The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Then for a thousand years, or the rest of the afternoon, such a One spins in the Blazing Fire of Changes, embodying all the transformations, one after the other, and then beginning again, and then ending again, 86,000 times a second. Then such a One, if he is a man, is ready to love the woman Sahara; and such a One, if she is a woman, is ready to love the man who can put into song The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Is it you who is waiting, Sahara, or is it me?

EARLY QUESTIONS

Why do cloisters of radiant nuns study your production, while I drink the tea called Smooth Move, alone in my cabin during the howling winter?

Why do you mount the High Seat and deliver an incomprehensible discourse on The Source of All Things, which includes questionable observations on the contract between men and women, while I sit on the floor twisted into the Lotus Position (which is not meant for North Americans), laying out the grid-lines of shining modern cities where, far from your authority, democracy and romance can flourish?

Why do you fall asleep when, in order to familiarize you with our culture, I screen important sex videos, and then when they’re finished, why do you suddenly wake up and say: “Study human love interesting, but not so interesting?”

Why can’t the Great Vehicle, which rolls so merrily through the quaint streets of Kyoto, make it up the switchbacks of Mt. Baldy? And if it can’t, is it any good to us?

Why do the irises bend to you, while dangerous pine cones fall from a considerable height on our unprotected bald heads?

Why do you command us to talk, and then talk instead?

It is because a bell has summoned me to your room, it is because I am speechless in the honour of your company, it is because I am reeling in the fragrance of some unutterable hospitality, it is because I have forgotten all my questions, that I throw myself to the floor, and vanish into yours.

– Mt. Baldy, 1998

THE MOON

The moon is outside.

I saw the great uncomplicated thing

when I went to take a leak just now.

I should have looked at it longer.

I am a poor lover of the moon.

I see it all at once and that’s it

for me and the moon.

SWEET TIME

How sweet time feels

when it’s too late

and you don’t have to follow

her swinging hips

all the way into

your dying imagination

FOOD TASTES GOOD

Food tastes good

but I’d rather not eat

Touching a beautiful young woman

is a great honour

in this vale of tears

forgive me if I pass on this

or take a rain check

Meditation calms the fevered heart

or so the advertising goes

but it drives me

up the wall

of gossip and breathlessness

Furthermore

I don’t want to be a friend to everyone

I haven’t got that much time

I’m fasting

I’m fasting secretly

to make my face thin

so G-d can love me

as He did before

I had the slightest interest

in these matters

FUN

It is so much fun

to believe in G-d

You must try it sometime

Try it now

and find out whether

or not

G-d wants you

to believe in Him

BASKET

You should go

from place to place

recovering the poems

that have been written for you,

to which ou can affix your signature.

Don’t discuss these matters

with anyone.

Retrieve. Retrieve.

When the basket is full

someone will appear

to whom you can present it.

She will spread her wide skirt

and sit down

on a black stone

and your basket will bounce

like a speck in sunlight

on the immense landscape

of her lap.

BY THE RIVERS DARK

By the rivers dark

I wandered on

I lived my life

in Babylon

and I did forget

my holy song

and I had no strength

in Babylon

by the rivers dark

where I could not see

who was waiting there

who was hunting me

and he cut my lip

and he cut my heart

so I could not drink

from the river dark

and he covered me

and I saw within

my lawless heart

and my wedding ring

I did not know

and I could not see

who was waiting there

who was hunting me

by the rivers dark

I panicked on

I belonged at last

to Babylon

then he struck my heart

with a deadly force

and he said, “This heart

it is not yours.”

and he gave the wind

my wedding ring

and he circled me

with everything

by the rivers dark

in a wounded dawn

I live my life

in Babylon

tho’ I take my song

from a withered limb

both song and tree

they sing for him

be the truth unsaid

and the blessing gone

if I forget

my Babylon

I did not know

and I could not see

who was waiting there

who was hunting me

by the rivers dark

where it all goes on

by the rivers dark

in Babylon

LOVE ITSELF

for L.W.

The light came through the window,

Straight from the sun above,

And so inside my little room

There plunged the rays of Love.

In streams of light I clearly saw

The dust you seldom see,

Out of which the Nameless makes

A Name for one like me.

I’ll try to say a little more:

Love went on and on

Until it reached an open door –

Then Love Itself was gone.

All busy in the sunlight

The flecks did float and dance,

And I was tumbled up with them

In formless circumstance.

Then I came back from where I’d been

My room, it looked the same –

But there was nothing left between

The Nameless and the Name.

I’ll try to say a little more:

Love went on and on

Until it reached an open door –

Then Love Itself was gone.

YOU HAVE LOVED ENOUGH

I said I’d be your lover.

You laughed at what I said.

I lost my job forever.

I was counted with the dead.

I swept the marble chambers,

But you sent me down below.

You kept me from believing

Until you let me know:

That I am not the one who loves –

It’s love that seizes me.

When hatred with his package comes,

You forbid delivery.

And when the hunger for your touch

Rises from the hunger,

You whisper, “You have loved enough,

Now let me be the Lover.”

THOUSAND KISSES DEEP

for Sandy 1945–1998

1.

You came to me this morning

And you handled me like meat

You’d have to be a man to know

How good that feels how sweet

My mirror twin my next of kin

I’d know you in my sleep

And who but you would take me in

A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened

Like a lily to the heat

I’m just another snowman

Standing in the rain and sleet

Who loved you with his frozen love

His second-hand physique

With all he is and all he was

A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me

I know you had to cheat

To pose all hot and high behind

The veils of sheer deceit

Our perfect porn aristocrat

So elegant and cheap

I’m old but I’m still into that

A thousand kisses deep

And I’m still working with the wine

Still dancing cheek to cheek

The band is playing Auld Lang Syne

The heart will not retreat

I ran with Diz and Danté

I never had their sweep

But once or twice they let me play

A thousand kisses deep

The autumn slipped across your skin

Got something in my eye

A light that doesn’t need to live

And doesn’t need to die

A riddle in the book of love

Obscure and obsolete

Till witnessed here in time and blood

A thousand kisses deep

I’m good at love I’m good at hate

It’s in between I freeze

Been working out but it’s too late

It’s been too late for years

But you look fine you really do

The pride of Boogie Street

Somebody must have died for you

A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened

Like a lily to the heat

I’m just another snowman

Standing in the rain and sleet

But you don’t need to hear me now

And every word I speak

It counts against me anyhow

A thousand kisses deep.

2.

The ponies run the girls are young

The odds are there to beat

You win a while and then it’s done

Your little winning streak

And summoned now to deal

With your invincible defeat

You live your life as if it’s real

A thousand kisses deep.

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed

I’m back on Boogie Street

You lose your grip and then you slip

Into the Masterpiece

And maybe I had miles to drive

And promises to keep

You ditch it all to stay alive

A thousand kisses deep

Confined to sex we pressed against

The limits of the sea

I saw there were no oceans left

For scavengers like me

I made it to the forward deck

I blessed our remnant fleet

And then consented to be wrecked

A thousand kisses deep

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed

I’m back on Boogie Street

I guess they won’t exchange the gifts

That you were meant to keep

And sometimes when the night is slow

The wretched and the meek

We gather up our hearts and go

A thousand kisses deep

And fragrant is the thought of you

The file on you complete

Except what we forgot to do

A thousand kisses deep

SPLIT

What can I do

with this love of mine

with this hairy knob

with this poison wine

Who shall I take

to the edge of despair

with my knee on her heart

and my lips in her hair

So I’ll take all my love

and I’ll split it in two

and there’s one part for me

and there’s one part for you

And we’ll drink the wine

and we’ll hide the staff

and the lover will groan

and the other will laugh

And I’ll go to your bed

and I’ll lie by your side

and I’ll bury the bones

and I’ll marry the bride

And you’ll do the same

when you come to my room

You’ll dig in my dirt

and you’ll bury the groom

And I swear by this love

which is living and dead

that we will be separate

and we will be wed

– Mt. Baldy, 1994

ALEXANDRA LEAVING

after “The God Abandons Anthony,” by C. Cavafy

Suddenly the night has grown colder.

Some deity preparing to depart.

Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,

they slip between the sentries of your heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,

they gain the light, they formlessly entwine;

and radiant beyond your widest measure

they fall among the voices and the wine.

It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,

a fitful dream the morning will exhaust –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin.

Even though she wakes you with a kiss.

Do not say the moment was imagined.

Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,

Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.

Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.

Your first commitments tangible again.

You who had the honour of her evening,

And by that honour had your own restored –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Alexandra leaving with her lord.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;

In full command of every plan you wrecked –

Do not choose a coward’s explanation

that hides behind the cause and the effect.

You who were bewildered by a meaning,

whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

– Hydra, Greece, September 1999

A PUERTO RICAN SONG

‘The Devil’s Broken Heart’

that was the song

and it was the Devil singing it

and whoever heard that song

would never be the same

and in every heart

of those men and women who heard

‘The Devil’s Broken Heart’

the weakness weakened

and the Christ of Love strengthened

and people went to bed that night

holding on to each other

like everything else was death

I listened to it

with Armand and Oscar Dorente

and Kathy Hanking

and a lot of other people

I’ve never seen again

BOOGIE STREET

A sip of wine, a cigarette,

and then it’s time to go

I tidied up the kitchenette.

I tuned the old banjo.

I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.

They’re saving me a seat.

I’m what I am, and what I am,

is back on Boogie Street.

And O my love, I still recall

the pleasures that we knew;

the rivers and the waterfall

wherein I bathed with you.

Bewildered by your beauty there

I’d kneel to dry your feet.

By such instructions you prepare

a man for Boogie Street.

So come, my friends, be not afraid.

We are so lightly here.

It is in love that we are made;

in love we disappear.

Tho’ all the maps of blood and flesh

are posted on the door,

there’s no one who has told us yet

what Boogie Street is for.

O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,

I never thought we’d meet.

You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:

I’m back on Boogie Street.

A LIMITED DEGREE

As soon as I understood

(even to a limited degree)

that this is G-d’s world

I began to lose weight

immediately

At this very moment

I am wearing

my hockey uniform

from the Sixth Grade

A LIFE OF ERRANDS

If You Are Lucky

You Will Grow Old

And Live

A Life Of Errands.

You Will Discern

What People Need

And Provide It

Before They Ask.

You Will Drive Your Car

Here And There

Delivering And Fetching

And Neither The Traffic

Nor The Weather

Will Bother You

In The Least.

You Will Whip Down

The 405

To San Diego

To Pick Up An Acorn

For Someone’s Proverb

And So On And So Forth.

In Spite Of The Ache

In Your Heart

About The Girl You

Never Found

And The Fact That

After Years Of

Spiritual Rigour

You Did Not Manage

To Enlighten Yourself

A Certain Cheerfulness

Will Begin To

Arise Out Of Your Crushed

Hopes And Intentions.

How Thirstily

You Embrace Your

Next Commission:

To Sift Through

The Sunglasses

At A Lost And Found

In Las Vegas

Just A Few Hours

Across The Desert.

Your Hair Is White

You Have Breasts

And A Gut

Over Your Belt

You Are No Longer A Boy,

Or Even A Man

But A Sense Of Gratitude

Enlivens Every Move

You Make.

Yes, Sir, These Are The

Very Gold-Rimmed Pair

She Left In The Plastic Tray

Beside The Dollar

Slot Machines.

No, Sir, I Am Not Lying.

WISH ME LUCK

a fresh spiderweb

billowing

like a spinnaker

across the open window

and here he is

the little master

sailing by

on a thread of milk

wish me luck

admiral

I haven’t finished anything

in a long time

MISSION

I’ve worked at my work

I’ve slept at my sleep

I’ve died at my death

And now I can leave

Leave what is needed

And leave what is full

Need in the Spirit

And need in the Hole

Beloved, I’m yours

As I’ve always been

From marrow to pore

From longing to skin

Now that my mission

Has come to its end:

Pray I’m forgiven

The life that I’ve led

The Body I chased

It chased me as well

My longing’s a place

My dying a sail

RELIGIOUS STATUES

After a while

I started playing with dolls

I loved their peaceful expressions

They all had their places

in a corner of Room 315

I would say to myself:

It doesn’t matter

that Leonard can’t breathe

that he is hopelessly involved

in the panic of the situation

I’d light a cigarette

and a stick of Nag Champa

Both would burn too fast

in the draft of the ceiling fan

Then I might say

something like:

Thank You

for the terms of my life

which make it so painlessly clear

that I am powerless

to do anything

and I’d watch CNN

the rest of the night

but now

from a completely different

point of view

one of the dolls

WHAT DID IT

An acquaintance told me

that the great sage

Nisargadatta Maharaj

once offered him a cigarette,

“Thank you, sir, but I don’t smoke.”

“Don’t smoke?” said the master,

“What’s life for?”

THE CIGARETTE ISSUE

This is beginning again

and like the first time

the girl’s name is Claire

and she’s French

But this time

the boy’s name is Jikan

and he’s an old man

It’s not Greece any more

it’s India

the new place for unhappiness

but this time

the boy is not unhappy

with his unhappiness

and Claire also has noticed

that the boy

is sixty-five years old

But what is exactly the same

is the promise, the beauty

and the salvation

of cigarettes

the little Parthenon

of an opened pack of cigarettes

and Mumbai, like the Athens

of forty years ago

is a city to smoke in

Well, that’s enough for now

I will be able to love her

and also love the rest of my life

from my experience with books

I MISS MY MOTHER

I want to bring her to India

And buy her

Gold and jewels

I want to hear her sigh

For the poor in the street

And marvel

At the unforgiving greyness

Of the Arabian Sea

She was right about everything

Including my foolish guitar

And where it got me

She would make sense of

The cotton flags

The sorrows of the port

The arches of the past

She’d pat my little head

And bless my dirty song

THOUSANDS

Out of the thousands

who are known,

or who want to be known

as poets,

maybe one or two

are genuine

and the rest are fakes,

hanging around the sacred precincts

trying to look like the real thing.

Needless to say

I am one of the fakes,

and this is my story.

MY BABY WASN’T THERE

My Baby wasn’t there

When I went to test Her love

But She’ll be there today

I pray to G-d above

I’ll sneak a look or two

And if I see Her melt

I’ll know that it was true

This feeling that I felt

My heart is like a thorn

Hers is like a Tree

My heart is dry and torn

Hers a Canopy

I’ve been up all night

And all I’ve got is this

I know that it’s not right

But nothing really is

She’s there at Her Machine

I’ll tiptoe down the aisle

And if it’s meant to be

She’ll greet me with a Smile

Then I’ll be so happy

I’ll live another day

I’ll thank Her for Her Charity

And then I’ll limp away

DUSKO’S TAVERNA 1967

They are still singing down at Dusko’s,

sitting under the ancient pine tree,

in the deep night of fixed and falling stars.

If you go to your window you can hear them.

It is the end of someone’s wedding,

or perhaps a boy is leaving on a boat in the morning.

There is a place for you at the table,

wine for you, and apples from the mainland,

a space in the songs for your voice.

Throw something on,

and whoever it is you must tell

that you are leaving,

tell them, or take them, but hurry:

they have sent for you –

the call has come –

they will not wait forever.

They are not even waiting now.

UNBECOMING

It’s unbecoming

to find you

in a place of entertainment

trying to forget

the tiny horror

of the last million years

Most of all

I dislike the brave violin

scraping against

the side of the massacre

as if to infer

that the killers are weak

and the victims will win

It complicates the nightmare

with a dream

It turns the nightmare

outside-in

Discard the violin

And put away your courage

Haven’t you noticed

how the thugs

and the blood-drinkers

are drawn to your courage

It is a provocation

in their sight

Give it back to the rocks

to the mud

to that which supports the mud

End this ugly experiment

with the human heart

Please do not tell me again

about the lonely railway station

where we undressed each other

in a hail of apple seeds

And this voice of ignorant

understanding –

experience the deep humiliation

as the tidal silence

refuses to affirm it

Stand there

in the vanity

of your solitude

Summon the short-lived tears

the shallow laughter

the comforts

that obey your suffering

that embrace your defeat

Stand there

goosefleshed and proud

high-breasted one

in the erotic rags

of religion

I sincerely hope

we do not have to meet again

at the next amusement

– 1979

THE OLD AUTOMAT ON 23RD ST.

I wandered into the Automat

Wearing a kind of religious hat

The meatballs were round

And the pancakes were flat

I asked G-d in heaven

To keep it like that

– 1970

TOO OLD

I am too old

to learn the names

of the new killers

This one here

looks tired and attractive

devoted, professorial

He looks a lot like me

when I was teaching

a radical form of Buddhism

to the hopelessly insane

In the name of the old

high magic

he commands

families to be burned alive

and children mutilated

He probably knows

a song or two that I wrote

All of them

all the bloody hand bathers

and the chewers of entrails

and the scalp peelers

they all danced

to the music of the Beatles

they worshipped Bob Dylan

Dear friends

there are very few of us left

silenced

trembling all the time

hidden among the blood –

stunned fanatics

as we witness to each other

the old atrocity

the old obsolete atrocity

that has driven out

the heart’s warm appetite

and humbled evolution

and made a puke of prayer

THE BEACH AT KAMINI

The sailboats

the silver water

the crystals of salt

on her eyelashes

All the world

sudden and shining

the moment before G-d

turned you inward

DURING THE DAY

I sit here

At the window

Waiting for you

To come jogging past

In your crucifix uniform

You remind me of myself

Perhaps (I wonder aimlessly)

I could comfort you

I love the furrows between your eyes

And the ravages of anxiety

Across your clenched expression

You have the new face

The coming face

The face of no objective experience

And you have chosen the path of muscle

Toward your sorrow

How private you are

In the minds of everyone

I salute you

Brave spirit

Who has swallowed so much

And tasted so little.

LAUGHTER IN THE PANTHEON

I enjoyed the laughter

old poets

as you welcomed me

but I won’t be staying

here for long

You won’t be either

– 1985

DEAR DIARY

You are greater than the Bible

And the Conference of the Birds

And the Upanishads

All put together

You are more severe

Than the Scriptures

And Hammurabi’s Code

More dangerous than Luther’s paper

Nailed to the Cathedral door

You are sweeter

Than the Song of Songs

Mightier by far

Than the Epic of Gilgamesh

And braver

Than the Sagas of Iceland

I bow my head in gratitude

To the ones who give their lives

To keep the secret

The daily secret

Under lock and key

Dear Diary

I mean no disrespect

But you are more sublime

Than any Sacred Text

Sometimes just a list

Of my events

Is holier than the Bill of Rights

And more intense

THE COLD

The cold seizes me

and I shiver

The wine

overthrows my tears

The night puts me to bed

and the sorrows

strengthen my resolve

Your name is burning

under a statue

Even when I was with you

I wanted to be here

The rain unhooks my belt

The wind gives a shape

to your absence

I move in and out

of the One Heart

no longer struggling

to be free

A MAGIC CURE

I get up too late

The day is lost

I don’t bless the rooster

I don’t raise my hands to the water

Then it’s dark

and I look into all the spots

on rue St-Denis

I even talk religion

to the other wastrels

who, like me, are after new women

In bed I fall asleep

in the middle of a Psalm

which I am reading

for a magic cure

– Montreal, 1975

LAYTON’S QUESTION

Always after I tell him

what I intend to do next,

Layton solemnly inquires:

Leonard, are you sure

you’re doing the wrong thing?

– after a photo by Laszlo

IF YOU KNEW

if you knew how much we loved you

you’d cover up

you wouldn’t fuck around

with the passion

that killed three hundred thousand people

at hiroshima

or scooped up rocks from the moon

and crushed them into dust

looking for you

looking for your lost encouragement

I WROTE FOR LOVE

I wrote for love.

Then I wrote for money.

With someone like me

it’s the same thing.

– 1975

LORCA LIVES

Lorca lives in New York City

He never went back to Spain

He went to Cuba for a while

But he’s back in town again

He’s tired of the gypsies

And he’s tired of the sea

He hates to play his old guitar

It only has one key

He heard that he was shot and killed

He never was, you know

He lives in New York City

He doesn’t like it though

MERCY RETURNS ME

A woman I want –

An honour I covet –

A place where I want my mind to dwell –

Then Mercy returns me

To the triad

And the crisis of the song.

THE TRADITION

Jazz on the radio

32 in the desk drawer

Brush in hand

Heart in sad confusion

He draws a woman

The sax says it better

The cold March night says it better

Everything but his heart and his hand

Says it better

Now there is a woman on the paper

Now there are colours

Now there is a shadow on her waist

He knows his own company

The surprises

Of patience and disorderly solitude

Knows the tune

According to his station

How to let the changes

He can’t play

Connect him to the ones who can

And the woman on the paper

Who will never pierce the air with her beauty

She belongs here too

She too has her place

In the basement of the vast museum

Not that he could boast about it

Even to himself

Not that he would dare to call it

Some kind of Path

He will never untangle

Or upgrade

The circumstances

That fasten him to this loneliness

Or bent down with love

Comprehend the sudden mercy

Which floods the room

And dissolves it now

In the traditional golden light

My Metal Cup

GOOD GERMANS

You took me to your family

You warned me well before

that your father is a fascist

and your mother is a whore

I was kind of disappointed

I was bored to tell the truth:

your folks they’re just Good Germans

but you, you’re Hitler Youth

So I’m going to live in China

where you get a better deal

where your killer is a poet

and your comrade is a girl

– 1973

IF I COULD HELP YOU

If I could help you, buddy, I would

I really would

I’d pray for you

I’d make muscles appear on your back

I’d take you to a bridge

that people think is beautiful

if there were the slightest chance

that you’d like it

I’d get you that motorcycle

I’d put your songs on the jukebox

if you were a singer

I’d help you step across

that crack in your life

I’d die for you on the cross again

I would do all these things for you

because I’m the Lord of your life

but you’ve gone so far from me

that I’ve decided to embrace you here

with my most elusive qualities

You always wanted to be brave and true

So breathe deeply now

and begin your great adventure

with crushing solitude

THE REMOTE

I often think about you

when I’m lying alone in

my room with my mouth

open and the remote

lost somewhere in the bed

THE MIST OF PORNOGRAPHY

when you rose out of the mist

of pornography

with your talk of marriage

and orgies

I was a mere boy

of fifty-seven

trying to make a fast buck

in the slow lane

it was ten years too late

but I finally got

the most beautiful girl

on the religious left

to go with her lips

to the sunless place

the art of song

was in my bones

the coffee died for me

I never answered

any phone calls

and I said a prayer

for whoever called

and didn’t leave a message

this was my life

in Los Angeles

when you slowly

removed your yellow sweater

and I slobbered over

your boyish haunches

and I tried to be

a husband

to your dark and motherly

intentions

I thank you

for the ponderous songs

I brought to completion

instead of ----ing you

more often

and the hours you allowed me

on a black meditation mat

intriguing with my failed

aristocratic pedigree

to overthrow vulgarity

and set America straight

with the barbed wire

and the regular beatings

of rhyme

and now that we are gone

I have a thousand years

to tell you how I rise

on everything that rises

how I became that lover

whom you wanted

who has no other life

but your beauty

who is naked and bent

under the quotas of your desire

I have a thousand years

to be your twin

the loving mirrored one

who was born with you

I’m free at last

to trick you into posing

for my Polaroid

while you inflame

my hearing aid

with your vigorous obscenities

your panic cannot hurry me here

and my panic and my falling

shoulders

our shameless lives

are the grains

scattered for an offering

before the staggering heights

of our love

and the other side of your anxiety

is a hammock of sweat

and moaning

and generations of the butterfly

mate and fall

as we undo the differences

and time comes down

like the smallest pet of G-d

to lick our fingers

as we sleep

in the tangle

of straps and bracelets

and Oh the sweetness of first nights

and twenty-third nights

and nights

after death and bitterness

sweetness of this very morning

the bees slamming into

the broken hollyhocks

and the impeccable order

of the objects on the table

the weightless irrelevance

of all our old intentions

as we undo

as we undo

every difference

DELAY

“I can hold in a great deal; I don’t speak

until the waters overflow their banks

and break through the dam.”

Thus I was able to delay this book well beyond

the end of the 20th century.

MONTREAL AFTERNOON

Henry and I

cover our heads

and write a few poems

The prayer book is open

The radio is playing

Henry says: They’re not

playing that right,

it should be faster.

The kitchen door is open

It’s raining

Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your/father

It was a hunting accident

Rabbi Zerkin is speeding

toward us

through the wet city

with the woollen prayer-shawls

that he promised us

on the telephone

Henry says: In the year

sixteen hundred thousand

two hundred and twenty-nine

you will begin a commentary

on the Chumash

and in the year fourteen thousand

four hundred and forty-three

I will begin a commentary

on the Chumash

I’ll call mine Tzim Tzimay Ha Yerak

which means

The Contracted Greens of the Greenery;

then we will write a book together

called Acorns and Other Leaves

or

The Green Hills of Sunshine

We smoke Players Medium

drink cups of hot water

waiting for Rabbi Zerkin

Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your father

It was a hunting accident

But he’ll be back

So will Queen Elizabeth the First

READING TO THE PRIME MINISTER

NEED THE SPEED

need the speed

need the wine

need the pleasure

in my spine

need your hand

to pull me out

need your juices

on my snout

need to see

I never saw

your need for me

your longing raw

need to hear

I never heard

against my ear

your dirty word

need to have

you summon me

like moon above

the gathered sea

need to know

I never knew

the tidal tow-

ing come from you

need to feel

I never felt

your magnet pull-

ing at my self

now it fades

now it’s gone

hormonal rage

unquiet song

HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED

I stopped looking for you

I stopped waiting for you

I stopped dying for you

and I started dying for myself

I aged rapidly

I became fat in the face

and soft in the gut

and I forgot that I’d ever loved you

I was old

I had no focus, no mission

I wandered around eating and buying

bigger and bigger clothes

and I forgot why I hated

every long moment that was mine to fill

Why did you come back to me tonight

I can’t even get off this chair

Tears run down my cheeks

I am in love again

I can live like this

VOICE DICTATING IN A PLANE OVER EUROPE

Leonardos,

I am no longer lonely.

I will accept your friendship now

if you can say

something true about me.

That is correct,

I had a red cardigan sweater

which I used to wear

in the evenings.

The years have brought us together.

Straighten your seat back.

You are landing in Vienna

where I killed myself

in nineteen sixty-two.

THE GREAT EVENT

It’s going to happen very soon. The great event that will end the horror. That will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun goes down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will reverse the effects of the world’s mad plunge into suffering for the last 200 million years. What a lovely night that will be. What a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and the retired nightingales pick up their dusty tails, and assert the majesty of creation!

THE PARIS SKY

The Paris sky

is blue and bright

I want to fly

with all my might

Her legs are long

her heart is high

The chains are strong

but so am I

THE STORY THUS FAR

Things blew all over the place on the day that I was born. It was windy. Dried leaves crashed against the walls of the Homeopathic Hospital. I was alive. I was alive in the horror.

The Givers huddled over me like a football team. They started to give me things and then to take them away. The things that didn’t fit they chucked back into the Funnel of the Void. The gifts were many and many were the warnings that went with them.

We are giving you a great heart but if you drink wine you will begin to hate the world. The moon is your sister but if you take sleeping pills you will find yourself in the company of unhappy women. Every time you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory.

My mother was lying not far away and I heard her cry, “He isn’t mine!” My noble parent cried to my ears alone from her bed of blood and water. I heard her say it and I thanked her for the truth with a shriek of joy. I was not born into a family. I was fully protected.

The hammers fell on infants everywhere but I was saved on a river in the beautiful autumn land of Egypt.

THE SWEETEST LITTLE SONG

You go your way

I’ll go your way too

THING

I am this thing that needs to sing

I love to sing

to my beloved’s other thing

and to my own dear sweet G-d

I love to sing to Him and her

and to my baby’s lower fur

which is so holy

that I want to crawl on my knees

off a high cliff

and sail around singing

in the wind

which is so friendly

to my feathery spirit

I am this thing

that wants to sing

when I am up against the spit

and scorn of judges

O G-D I want to sing

I Am

THIS THING THAT NEEDS TO SING

STANZAS FOR H.M.

O perfect gentleman, and champion

of the Royal Throne; O unbroken stone

of Sinai’s heart; O Hero of Verdun;

our greatest poet until now unknown,

whose banner over death has always flown

in wilds of poverty and solitude;

I thank you for the years you spent alone

with nothing to hang on to but a mood

of glory, searching words that Love could not elude

(We lost you for a while. The doctors tried

their hopeful science on a chosen soul,

but this chosen soul was sitting by the side

of G-d, and touched by Him, hale and whole,

though broken in men’s eyes, in His control.)

O friend who pardoned everyone who came

to light your dark and dim your aureole,

accept this awkward homage to your fame

(nor Modesty supply your instant counterclaim.)

We do not know the Will or voice that made

you fly from high Decarie’s overpass;

we do not know the Hebrew you obeyed

to raise your feet so far from sand and grass

and try the air, O faithful Anabas –

but blessed be the One who saved you there,

and bless His Name, His every Alias,

Who gave you, on that insubstantial stair,

the bravest songs we have of loss and love’s repair.

Dear Henry, I know you will forgive these

lines of mine, their clumsy antique tone,

for they are true and not mere obsequies,

and for all their rhetoric overblown

a simple gesture to the man you own,

whose friendship is so rare, whose art so pure,

simplicity is dazed, then overthrown –

alarmed and shy my love must I obscure

behind the fallen grandiose of literature.

I don’t know where I’m going any more.

I find myself a table and a chair.

I wait, I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

I change the room, the country. I compare

my clattering armoured blitz to your spare

weaponry of light, your refined address –

I know you stand where none of us would dare,

I know you kneel where none of us would guess,

well ordered and alone, huge heart, self-pitiless.

WHY I LOVE FRANCE

O France, you gave your language to my children, your lovers and your mushrooms to my wife. You sang my songs. You delivered my uncle and my auntie to the Nazis. I met the leather chests of the police in Place de la Bastille. I took money from the Communists. I gave my middle age to the milky towns of the Luberon. I ran from farm dogs on a road outside of Rousillon. My hand trembles in the land of France. I came to you with a soiled philosophy of holiness, and you bade me sit down for an interview. O France, where I was taken so seriously, I had to reconsider my position. O France, every little Messiah thanks you for his loneliness. I want to be somewhere else, but I am always in France. Be strong, be nuclear, my France. Flirt with every side, and talk, talk, never stop talking about how to live without G-d.

ON THE PATH

for C.C.

On the path of loneliness

I came to the place of song

and tarried there

for half my life

Now I leave my guitar

and my keyboards

my friends and s-x companions

and I stumble out again

on the path of loneliness

I am old but I have no regrets

not one

even though I am angry and alone

and filled with fear and desire

Bend down to me

from your mist and vines

O high one, long-fingered

and deep-seeing

Bend down to this sack of poison

and rotting teeth

and press your lips

to the light of my heart

MY REDEEMER

I think of you all the time

But I can’t speak about you any more

I must love you secretly

I must come to you when I am alone

As I am now

And even now I must be careful

I want all the women

You created in your image

That is why I lower my eyes

When I pass them in the street

You can hear my prayer

The one I have no words for

The name that I cannot utter

I’m twisted with love

I’m burning with boredom

I hate my disguise

The mask of longing

But what can I do

Without my disguise

I wouldn’t be created

My Redeemer is a woman

Her picture is lost

We surrendered it

A hundred years ago

“Give us the Lady,” they said.

“It is too dangerous now

“to have her likeness on a wall.”

So I gave her away

And the language with her

The happy language

She invented for her name

And anyone who wants

To talk about her

Has to become like me

Humiliated and silent

Twisted with love

A specialist in boredom

And other childish matters

FIRST OF ALL

First of all nothing will happen

and a little later

nothing will happen again

A family will pass by in the night

speaking of the children’s bedtime

That will be the signal

for you to light a cigarette

Then comes a delicate moment

when the backwoods men

gather around the table

to discuss your way of life

Dismiss them with a glass of

cherry juice

Your way of life has been over

for many years

The moonlit mountains

surround your heart

and the Anointed One

with his bag and stick

can be picked out on a path

He is probably thinking of what

you said

in the schoolyard 100 years ago

This is a dangerous moment

that can plunge you into silence

for a million years

Fortunately the sound of clarinets

from a wandering klezmer

ensemble

drifts into the kitchen

Allow it to distract you

from your cheerless meditation

The refrigerator will go into

second gear

and the cat will climb onto the

windowsill

For no reason at all

you will begin to cry

Then your tears will dry up

and you will ache for a companion

I will be that companion

At first nothing will happen to us

and later on

it will happen to us again

THE CROSS

I am Theodoros

the poet who could not read or write

When I was too old to work

I made religious items

for the tourist shops

I broke down doors

and I put my hands on women

women from America and Paris

They were the ones

who said that I was a poet

I will not tell you about my problems

my son’s fall

or my life at sea

I carved crosses

and like everybody else

I carried one

I astonished women with my desire

I fished for them

with goggles and a spear

and I fed them

with what they had never eaten before

If you are a woman

and you follow the shavings

of this man’s effort

in the moonlight

you will see my muscled ghost

on the sea road to Vlychos

and if you are a man

on the same road

you will hear women’s voices

exactly as I heard them

coming from the water

coming from boats

and from in between the boats

and then surely

you will understand my life

and do a kindness to my soul

by forgiving me

I pray this to the one

who fashioned me out of myself

I confess this

over the wine

to Leonardos

my Hebrew friend

who writes it down

for those to come

– Kamini, Hydra, 1980

TIRED

We’re tired of being white and we’re tired of being black, and we’re not going to be white and we’re not going to be black any longer. We’re going to be voices now, disembodied voices in the blue sky, pleasant harmonies in the cavities of your distress. And we’re going to stay this way until you straighten up, until your suffering makes you calm, and you can believe the word of G-d who has told you so many times, and in so many ways, to love one another, or at least not to torture and murder in the name of some stupid vomit-making human idea that makes G-d turn away from you, and darken the cosmos with inconceivable sorrow. We’re tired of being white and we’re tired of being black, and we’re not going to be white and were not going to be black any longer.

SOMETHING FROM THE EARLY SEVENTIES

By and all, or by and large, as you say, the reading public’s disinterest in the novel of sensibility behooves itself very well. Or to put it differently, I am very different from most of you, and the older I get, the gladder. I should have come from a different country to entertain you with the horrors of my native land, but I didn’t. I came from your very midst, or you could say, your very mist. I am your very mist. But don’t be alarmed; you are not in the presence of a verbal fidget. If I strain too easily to push a pun into a profundity, it is only because I am at the end of my tether. I’ve taken too much acid, or I’ve been too lonely, or I’ve been educated beyond my intelligence, or however you want to explain me away. It’s a pity if someone has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it. It is really amazing how famous I am to those few who truly comprehend what I am about. I am the Voice of Suffering and I cannot be comforted. Many have tried but apparently, and mercifully, I am immune to their shabby consolations. I will capture your tear without hardly trying, in the vast net of my idle prattle. I am going to tell you such a love story that will make you happy because you are not me, but who knows, you may be sobbing behind your ecstasy, as I have hinted, or even promised. I think it’s a good story. I think it’s tough. I think it’s got fibre. I’ve told it to a lot of people and they all liked it. I’m going to tell it to you. Among my credentials, I am the creator of the Black Photograph. Ask some informed commuter on the subway and he might growl scornfully: Oh yeah, he’s the guy who takes a lot of trouble setting up a picture and then holds his hand over the lens when he snaps it. I am truly amused by this fictitious traveller’s conversation and I will let his description stand for the process of my art. My art, my eternity. I will be the delight of future eyes when this grotesque parody of humanity

has evolved into something no doubt, worse. These future monsters of the unborn seed will pass many excellent vacations of intensity immersed in the emanations of my colourless rectangles. A few years back a clever New York art dealer attempted to capitalize on the most obvious aspects of my eternity, and for a few months I was a figure on Tenth Street, and the darling of a small clique of curiously small and thin people, who were devoted to promoting a “new” form of human expression called ArtScience. Some of these fanatics tried to convince me that they understood what I was doing. Needless to say, they were barking, as was Adam of the fable, up the wrong tree. Nothing anyone has ever said about the Black Photograph has ever meant a fig to me, except, of course, for Nico. She could read them. She knew what I was doing. She knew who I was. And I long for her still. I will pick my way back through the boredom and irrelevance of the last few decades and tell you of a time when I was truly alive, in the human sense, of course. In the other sense, in the realm of the Grecian Urn, in the annals of crystal and imperishable diamond, I have remained the Absolute Creator, life itself to whatever I touched, as immediate, as irresistible, as wild and undeniable as a woman’s hand on the adolescent groin. I have been, I am, and I will remain the Ch---t of Matter, and the Redeemer of the Inert. Now you may have an inkling of the spirit in which I conceived for myself the challenge of the Black Photograph. Nico perceived me immediately through all my pathetic bullshit, as some would, and should, call it. My work, among other things, is a monument to Nico’s eyes. That there was such a pair in my own time, and that I met them, forehead to forehead; that the Black Photograph sang to other irises, and yes, corneas, retinas and optic nerves, all the way down the foul leather bag to Nico’s restless heart, another human heart; that this actually happened constitutes the sole assault on my loneliness that the Eternal has ever made, and it was her.

Therefore I was in New York at a curtain time, in a certain place; actually it was The Chelsea Hotel. This clever art dealer, call him Ahab, possessed the sad misimpression that I would enjoy coming in and going out through a grimy lobby heaped and hung with the

fashionable excrement of the ambitious hustlers in the studios above: enormous reproductions of cigar boxes; pillowlike canvases billowing over their innocent frames like so many beer bellies; infantile electromagnetic devices to advertise the artist’s acquaintance with technology; mobiles, so badly constructed, that they compounded their capacity for psychic offence with a physical hazard; cognac snifters of various size, painted red and enclosed in a glass cabinet; all in the name of some dreary change of perspective, as if that’s what humanity needs; and all these tricks, all these ugly motives, all this poisonous medicine chest of Gotham cunning, promoting itself as the urgent specific to a dying culture; all this profanity made flesh; quickly accumulating layer after layer of viscous grit generated on Twenty-Third Street, and in the low heavens of the neighbourhood; – a presage of the dirty treasure’s soon-to-be-unnoticed burial under the sands of time. That’s the hotel he put me in. He thought I was one of them. Also Dylan Thomas sailed out from that lobby to pierce his eye on a rose-thorn and hence or thence to assume his rightful overstuffed easy chair in the crowded pantheon of flabby heroism. It can be quickly divined I am no friend of the age.

BUTTER DISH

Darling, I now have a butter dish

that is shaped like a cow

ARGUMENT

You might be a person who likes to argue with Eternity. A good way to begin such an Argument is:

Why do You rule against me

Why do You silence me now

When will the Truth be on my lips

And the Light be on my brow?

After some time has passed, the answer to these questions percolating upwards from the pit of your stomach, or downwards from the crown of your hat, or having been given, at last, the right pill, you might begin to fall in love with the One who asked them; and perhaps then you will cry out, as so many of our parents did:

Blessed be the One

Who has sweetened

my Argument.

MUCH LATER

Ray Charles singing You Win Again

in the sunlight

twenty years ago

Ray Charles the singer I would never be

and my young wife

‘the wife of my youth’

smiling at me from an upstairs room

in the old house

Ray Charles and Marianne

dear spirits of my Greek life

now in the sunshine of every new summer

Marianne coming down the steps

‘the woman of the house’

Ray Charles speaking fiercely

for our virgin humanity

Twenty years ago

and again in this Hollywood summer

still companions of the heart

as I measure myself once more

against the high sweet standards

of my youth

– Los Angeles, 1978

ANOTHER CHRISTOPHER

There is another Christopher

Guide to Broken Ways

Rejected Christ he carries far

Yours he cannot raise

SEPARATED

I was doing something

I don’t remember what

I was standing in a place

I don’t remember where

I was waiting for someone

but I don’t remember who

It was before or it was after

I don’t remember when

And suddenly or gradually

I was removed, I was taken

to this place of reversal

and I was separated

and in the place of every part

there was the name of fear

and for a vast memorial

there was the name of grief

If you know the prayer

for one who has been so dislocated

please say it or sing it

and if there is among the words

an empty space, or among the letters

an orchard of return

please set my name firmly there

with a voice or hand

which only you command

you righteous ones

who are concerned with such matters

But hurry please

for all the parts of me

that gathered briefly around this plea

are dispersed again

and scattered on the Other Side

where the angels stand upside down

and everything is covered with dust

and everyone burns with shame

and no one is allowed to cry out

ANGRY AT 11 PM

THE THIRD INVENTION

Blindly I worked

at my third invention

taking the chances

of one who is lost,

feeling my way

to a cleaner expression

of the absolute filth

I stumbled across.

And all for the sake

of an interested woman

riding the night’s

last flicker of hope,

some tourist of beauty

in full disappointment,

ready to fall in love

with a ghost.

and here was the ghost

with his third invention

the usual shit

for the highest reward;

and now it was ready,

the third invention.

ready to fall

in love with the world.

And he falls back

and she comes forward;

his third invention

measures them both.

She lies in the arms

of his third invention

and back in his room,

he commences the fourth.

This is the work

of the highest pretension

an automatic ode

to the world.

O deep in the comfort

of full employment,

he’s lost to the fourth

and he’s lost to the third

– 1980

MY MOTHER ASLEEP

remembering my mother

at a theatre in Athens

thirty

thirty-five years ago

a revue by Theodorakis

those great songs

she fell asleep

in the chair beside mine

in the open-air theatre

she had arrived that day

from Montreal

and the play started

close to midnight

and she slept through

the mandolins

the climbing harmonies

and the great songs

I was young

I hadn’t had my children

I didn’t know how far away

your love could be

I didn’t know

how tired you could get

ROBERT APPEARS AGAIN

Well, Robert, here you are again talking to me at the Café de Flore in Paris. I haven’t seen you for a while. I have several versions of that sonnet I wrote after your death but I never got it right. I love you, Robert, I still do. You were an interesting man, and the first friend I really quarrelled with. I’m slightly stoned on half-a-tab of speed I found in this old suit, it must be twenty years old, and I took it with a glass of orange juice. It couldn’t possibly work after all this time, but here we are, talking again. I’m glad you don’t tell me what it’s like where you are because I have no interest in the afterlife. You’re a little pissed off as usual, as if you’ve just come from something immensely boring. Here we are, talking about the lousy deal we negotiated for ourselves. What are you saying? Why are you smiling? I’m still working hard, Robert. I can’t seem to bring anything to completion and I’m in real trouble. The speed is wearing off, or the mood, and I can’t tell you an amusing story about my trouble, but you know what I mean. Of all my friends you know what I mean. Well, goodbye, Robert, and fuck you too. Your disembodied status entitles you to a lot of privileges, but you might have excused yourself before disappearing again for who knows how long.

MY MOTHER IS NOT DEAD

My mother isn’t really dead.

Neither is yours.

I’m so happy for you.

You thought your mother was dead,

And now she isn’t.

What about your father?

Is he well?

Don’t worry about any of your relatives.

Do you see the insects?

One of them was once your dog.

But do not try to pat the ant.

It will be destroyed by your awkward affection.

The tree is trying to touch me.

It used to be an afternoon.

Mother, mother,

I don’t have to miss you any more.

Rover, Rover, Rex, Spot,

Here is the bone of my heart.

– after a photo by Hazel Field

SHIRLEY

Let me go back to Shirley

She knew who I was

before the ascension

of sparks

She led me to

the bicycle of armholes

and in her front

I was the glass baseball

of Ancient Greece

the soaring stones

of my mother’s mouth

Shirley understood

my straw and my lipstick

the lacquered soda of ambition

and the splash of mind

as it all goes by

She was the

Nurse of Laughter

in the Bat-House

She laughed when

I was born as a surprise

in my father’s shaving kit

But enough of you and

you and you

who have captured

all the High Places

I am the veteran

the badge of red

the very friend of Shirley

Return to your

leaves of winter

and your sad jokes

about the reservoirs of

taxation

THE BEST

India has the best Ice Cream

America the best Chocolate

England the best Male Legs

Spain the best Cross

Italy the best Mist

Israel the best Emergency

Canada the best Light

Mexico the best Eagles

Portugal the best Lonely Islands

Egypt the best Minorities

Norway the best Music

Morocco the best Jews

Korea the best Italian Food

I’ve been to too many countries

I died when I left Montreal

I met women I didn’t understand

I pretended to get interested in food

But it was all The Fear of Snow

It was all The Will of G-d

It was all The Heart

swallowing The Other Organs

It was Five Days of Summer

and Two Days of Spring

Mostly it was the Death of my Dog

Sorrow is the time to begin

Longing is the place to rejoice

But I did not begin

and I did not rejoice

I was lazy in G-d

Books lie open all around me

Despite my efforts

they keep coming into my room

And there is a slab of old stone

with cuneiform inscriptions

When I lived in Montreal

I knew what to wear

I had old clothes

and old friends

and my dog had been dead

for only ten or fifteen years

Fortunately there is no Space

for Regret

in The Poverty

of these Reflections

CLOCKWORK

the crow knows

exactly where to sit

on the yellow bench

the wave

exactly where to break

the jaw that will not

unclench

is fastened perfectly

to the writer’s skull

future generations

come like clockwork

under the damp

cement arches

to include themselves

in this well-recorded

afternoon

THE DRUNK IS GENDER-FREE

This morning I woke up again

I thank my Lord for that

The world is such a pigpen

That I have to wear a hat

I love the Lord I praise the Lord

I do the Lord forgive

I hope I won’t be sorry

For allowing Him to live

I know you like to get me drunk

And laugh at what I say

I’m very happy that you do

I’m thirsty every day

I’m angry with the angel

Who pinched me on the thigh

And made me fall in love

With every woman passing by

I know they are your sisters

Your daughters mothers wives

If I have left a woman out

Then I apologize

It’s fun to run to heaven

When you’re off the beaten track

The Lord is such a monkey when

You’ve got Him on your back

The Lord is such a monkey

He’s such a woman too

Such a place of nothing

Such a face of you

May E crash into your temple

And look out thru’ your eyes

And make you fall in love

With everybody you despise

NEVER MIND

The war was lost

The treaty signed

I was not caught

I crossed the line

I had to leave

My life behind

I had a name

But never mind

Your victory

Was so complete

That some among you

Thought to keep

A record of

Our little truth

The cloth we wove

The tools we used

The games of luck

Our soldiers played

The stones we cut

The songs we made

Our law of peace

Which understands

A husband leads

A wife commands

And all of this

Expressions of

The Sweet Indifference

Some call Love

The Sweet Indifference

Some call Fate

But we had Names

More intimate

Names so deep

and Names so true

They’re lost to me

And dead to you

There is no need

That this survive

There’s truth that lives

And truth that dies

There’s truth that lives

And truth that dies

I don’t know which

So never mind

I could not kill

The way you kill

I could not hate

I tried I failed

No man can see

The vast design

Or who will be

Last of his kind

The story’s told

With facts and lies

You own the world

So never mind

THERE IS A MOMENT

There is a moment in every day when I kneel before the love I have for you. Then I remember that I am still that man. And I know that my life’s work is to be that man, who leans over a white tablet humbled in his constant and signifying love for you. It is eight twenty-seven in the evening. Once again the thought of you has rescued me from the puzzle of my indifference

and the hard wheel

in the chest’s centre

becomes a soft wheel

G-d lies down next to His lamb

so the creature can

gather itself

His Queen is massaged

by a thousand versions

of Her most devoted drone

and there you are

smiling at someone else

in my vision of the lost kitchen

and that is the way

I finish my work

until it starts again

NIGHTINGALE

I built my house beside the wood

So I could hear you singing

And it was sweet and it was good

And love was all beginning

Fare thee well my nightingale

’Twas long ago I found you

Now all your songs of beauty fail

The forest closes ’round you

The sun goes down behind a veil

’Tis now that you would call me

So rest in peace my nightingale

Beneath your branch of holly

Fare thee well my nightingale

I lived but to be near you

Though you are singing somewhere still

I can no longer hear you

THE FAITHLESS WIFE

after the poem by Lorca

The Night of Santiago

And I was passing through

So I took her to the river

As any man would do

She said she was a virgin

That wasn’t what I’d heard

But I’m not the Inquisition

I took her at her word

And yes she lied about it all

Her children and her husband

You were meant to judge the world

Forgive me but I wasn’t

The lights went out behind us

The fireflies undressed

The broken sidewalk ended

I touched her sleeping breasts

They opened to me urgently

Like lilies from the dead

Behind a fine embroidery

Her nipples rose like bread

Her petticoat was starched and loud

And crushed between our legs

It thundered like a living cloud

Beset by razor blades

No silver light to plate their leaves

The trees grew wild and high

A file of dogs patrolled the beach

To keep the night alive

We passed the thorns and berry bush

The reeds and prickly pear

I made a hollow in the earth

To nest her dampened hair

Then I took off my necktie

And she took off her dress

My belt and pistol set aside

We tore away the rest

Her skin was oil and ointments

And brighter than a shell

Your gold and glass appointments

Will never shine so well

Her thighs they slipped away from me

Like schools of startled fish

Though I’ve forgotten half my life

I still remember this

That night I ran the best of roads

Upon a mighty charger

But very soon I’m overthrown

And she’s become the rider

Now as a man I won’t repeat

The things she said aloud

Except for this my lips are sealed

Forever and for now

And soon there’s sand in every kiss

And soon the dawn is ready

And soon the night surrenders

To a daffodil machete

I gave her something pretty

And I waited ’til she laughed

I wasn’t born a gypsy

To make a woman sad

I didn’t fall in love. Of course

It’s never up to you

But she was walking back and forth

And I was passing through

When I took her to the river

In her virginal apparel

When I took her to the river

On the Night of Santiago

And yes she lied about her life

Her children and her husband

You were born to get it right

Forgive me but I wasn’t

The Night of Santiago

And I was passing through

And I took her to the river

As any man would do

TRAVELLING LIGHT #31

I’m travelling light

So Au Revoir

I’ll miss my heart

And my guitar

It’s lovely here

So far away

I couldn’t take

Another day

The songs won’t come

But if they did

I’d go back home

So G-d forbid

I guess I’m just

Somebody who

Has given up

On me and you

I’m not alone

I’ve met a few

Who were travelling

Travelling Light

BACKYARD

Sitting in the garden

With my daughter’s dogs

Looking at the oranges

And the sky above

Flowers with their shadows

Moving two by two

Listening to the traffic

Hearing something new

Then I start to struggle

With a feeble song

Which will overcome me

Many miles from home

WHEN I WENT OUT

When I went out to tell her

The love that can’t be told

She hid in themes of marble

And deep reliefs of gold

When I caught her in the flesh

And floated on her hips

Her bosom was a fishing net

To harvest infant lips

A soft dismissal in her gaze

And I was more than free

But took a while to undertake

My full transparency

Ages since I went to look

Or she would think to hide

Torn the cover torn the book

The stories all untied

But someone made of thread and mist

Attends her every grace

Sees more beauty than I did

When I was in his place

THE GOAL

I can’t leave my house

or answer the phone.

I’m going down again

but I’m not alone.

Settling at last

accounts of the soul:

this for the trash,

that paid in full.

As for the fall, it

began long ago:

Can’t stop the rain,

Can’t stop the snow.

I sit in my chair.

I look at the street.

The neighbour returns

my smile of defeat.

I move with the leaves.

I shine with the chrome.

I’m almost alive.

I’m almost at home.

No one to follow

and nothing to teach,

except that the goal

falls short of the reach.

WORK IN PROGRESS

he’s going to get sick

and die alone

he is the main character

in my little story called

The House of Prayer

OPENED MY EYES

G-d opened my eyes this morning

loosened the bands of sleep

let me see

the waitress’s tiny earrings

and the merest foothills

of her small breasts

multiplied her front and back

in the double mirrors

of the restaurant

granted to me speed

and the penetration of layers

and turned me like a spindle

so I could gather in

and make my own

every single version of her beauty

Thank You Ruler of the World

Thank You for calling me Honey

THE CORRECT ATTITUDE

Except for a couple of hours

in the morning

which I passed in the company

of a sage

I stayed in bed

without food

only a few mouthfuls of water

“You are a fine-looking old man”

I said to myself in the mirror

“And what is more

you have the correct attitude

You don’t care if it ends

or if it goes on

And as for the women

and the music

there will be plenty of that

in Paradise”

Then I went to the Mosque

of Memory

to express my gratitude

NOT A JEW

Anyone who says

I’m not a Jew

is not a Jew

I’m very sorry

but this decision

is final

TITLES

I had the title Poet

and maybe I was one

for a while

Also the title Singer

was kindly accorded me

even though

I could barely carry a tune

For many years

I was known as a Monk

I shaved my head and wore robes

and got up very early

I hated everyone

but I acted generously

and no one found me out

My reputation

as a Ladies’ Man was a joke

It caused me to laugh bitterly

through the ten thousand nights

I spent alone

From a third-storey window

above the Parc du Portugal

I’ve watched the snow

come down all day

As usual

there’s no one here

There never is

Mercifully

the inner conversation

is cancelled

by the white noise of winter

“I am neither the mind,

The intellect,

nor the silent voice within…”

is also cancelled

and now Gentle Reader

in what name

in whose name

do you come

to idle with me

in these luxurious

and dwindling realms

of Aimless Privacy?

PUPPETS

German puppets

burnt the Jews

Jewish puppets

did not choose

Puppet vultures

eat the dead

Puppet corpses

they are fed

Puppet winds and

puppet waves

Puppet sailors

in their graves

Puppet flower

Puppet stem

Puppet Time

dismantles them

Puppet me and

puppet you

Puppet German

Puppet Jew

Puppet presidents

command

puppet troops to

burn the land

Puppet fire

puppet flames

feed on all the

puppet names

Puppet lovers

in their bliss

turn away from

all of this

Puppet reader

shakes his head

takes his puppet

wife to bed

Puppet night

comes down to say

the epilogue to

puppet day

NEVER ONCE

India is filled

with many

exceptionally beautiful women

who don’t desire me

I verify this

every single day

as I walk around

the city of Bombay

I look into face after face

and never once

have I been wrong

WHO DO YOU REALLY REMEMBER

My father died when I was nine;

my mother when I was forty-six.

In between, my dog and several friends.

Recently, more friends,

real friends,

uncles and aunts,

many acquaintances.

And then there’s Sheila.

She said, Don’t be a jerk, Len.

Take your desire seriously.

She died not long after

we were fifteen.

LOOKING AWAY

you would look at me

and it never occurred to me

that you might be choosing

the man of your life

you would look at me

over the bottles and the corpses

and I thought

you must be playing with me

you must think I’m crazy enough

to step behind your eyes

into the open elevator shaft

so I looked away

and I waited

until you became a palm tree

or a crow

or the vast grey ocean of wind

or the vast grey ocean of mind

now look at me

married to everyone but you

EVEN SOME OF MY OWN

This is the end of it all

There won’t be much more

Maybe a cry or two

From the peanut gallery

Where I have made

My last stand

In the meantime

Operate on the heart

With proven songs

Such as Ave Marie

And Kol Nidre

Even some of my own

And execute

The recommended procedures

Such as kneeling down

Beside the appalling heap

Of days and nights

And patting the newest seconds

On to it

As if it were

A child’s sandcastle

Facing the tide

Under a full moon etc.

In other words

Encouraging

In the old penitent

A borderless perspective

YOUR HEART

I told the truth

and look where it got me

I should have written about

the secret rivers

under Toronto

and the trials

of the Faculty Club

but no

I pulled the heart

out of a breast

and showed to everyone

the names of G-d

engraved upon it

I’m sorry it was

your heart

and not mine

I had no heart worth the reading

but I had the knife

and the temple

O my love

don’t you know that we have been killed

and that we died together

WHAT BAFFLED ME

I took pills for my memory

but I could not stop it

from erasing

I had a family once

They could walk on water

There was a one-way chain

that held me to a woman’s body

She didn’t know she jerked me

every-which-way

But who was she

and who were they?

In the midst of

someone’s explanation

I forget

what baffled me

THE WIND MOVES

The wind moves

the palm trees

and the fringes

of the beach umbrellas

The children go down

the waterslide

The grey Arabian Sea

slaps its soiled lace underwear

on the dirty flats

The wind moves everything

and then stops

but my pen

keeps on writing

by itself

Dear Roshi

I am dead now

I died before you

just as you predicted

in the early 70s

SORROWS OF THE ELDERLY

The old are kind.

The young are hot.

Love may be blind.

Desire is not.

ALONE AT LAST

How bitter were

the Prozac pills

of the last

few hundred mornings

ANYTHING WHICH REFERS

Anything which refers to the matter, even obliquely, is far from the mark. An incapacity for relevance is to be discovered as the muscle of salvation, but flexed and exercised as rarely as possible. The economy of desperation must be recognized. We don’t need Art that often. Now and then let Her step out of Her underwear. A little goes a long way.

For the moment, the Big Picture (or the Pig Bicture) can be accessed only by means of the Loose Canon (or the Coose Lanon), the Drifting Molecule, the Carcinogenic Radical. Après moi, the return to Classical Proportion. My sanity is a contagion.

Although we have not smoked for many a minute, we are tempted to ask the barman for one from his own pack.

Let us concentrate on the vertigo produced by easing up to the great plate-glass windows, which are all that prevent us from plunging 12 storeys into the Bay of Bengal.

– The Taj Mahal Hotel

JANA THINKS OF JOHN

Jana comes out of her house. Wearing almost nothing. The cup is still in her hand. She forgot to leave it on the table. The cold reminds her that she has neglected to dress beyond her underwear and her slip. She turns back. Shivering. Damn you, damn you, John.

She doesn’t know G-d has already killed her, and John, and Teri her Persian, and yours truly, who loves her more fiercely than John or Teri, merely because she is a woman. She doesn’t know that G-d has killed everyone.

Jana was with me once. When she was younger. When she was experimenting with the old. I want to get to know your body, Jikan. Oh sure. This is sufficiently grotesque, Jana, without my undressing. But she doesn’t call out my name as she returns to her unlocked door.

Me, I understand. John, I understand. Jana, I understand, although I hate to lose a naked woman. But Teri, why was Teri killed, as soon as G-d imagined her?

I was one of the things that was put into Jana. Once you have been put in, you have been put in forever. That is love. Sometimes it is greater than Death, sometimes smaller, sometimes the same size.

John has been killed, but that is not why his name is in her throat. It is because she is dismantled in her need of him. It used to be some kind of love but now it is beyond that in the magnitude of pain and dislocation. She has utterly forgotten that she has been killed. Do not comment on this condition unless you’ve been there.

Still, life goes on. Jana thinks of John, not me. He takes her out to the racing car garage, and she guesses which is his. She is wearing a white sweater which she bought when she was an Italian. (Milan. Mussolini’s train station. Kind, grass-stained women I never saw again. All of us killed under the tidal beauty of coming and going.) They kiss. He is off the hook. Her essence is the very leatherness of the bucket seats of his Ferrari.

And over here, my destiny whispers, “Someday in your arms, she will come to understand that she never did anything. And then she will be killed. Many like her will come to you. Many have already come. You have a job. You are a man-at-work, and you have been killed, along with the whole barber-shop, without a hitch.”

MY TIME

My time is running out

and still

I have not sung

the true song

the great song

I admit

that I seem

to have lost my courage

a glance at the mirror

a glimpse into my heart

makes me want

to shut up forever

so why do you lean me here

Lord of my life

lean me at this table

in the middle of the night

wondering

how to be beautiful

LOOKING THROUGH MY DREAMS

I was looking through my dreams

when I saw myself

looking through my dreams

looking through my dreams

and so on and so forth

until I was consumed

in the mysterious activity

of expansion and contraction

breathing in and out at the same time

and disappearing naturally

up my own asshole

I did this for 30 years

but I kept coming back

to let you know how bad it felt

Now I’m here at the end of the song

the end of the prayer

The ashes have fallen away at last

exactly as they’re supposed to do

The chains have slowly

followed the anchors

to the bottom of the sea

It’s merely a song

merely a prayer

Thank you, Teachers

Thank you, Everyone

So Do You

Because you are beautiful, but smelled bad, I knew you had been killed. And you felt the same about me. You said, “You are an elegant old man, but you stink.” After the long event of naked intervention, you brought your hands together and bowed. “Thank you,” you said. “That was the first time I never did anything.” Many are the lovely things I have been told about my luck, but this was surely the loveliest. “How do I smell now?” I asked. “Worse than ever,” you said. “Exactly my impression about you,” I said. Then you went back to France (or was it Holland?) and we have remained fast friends ever since. Sometimes, when the hummingbirds are still, I can smell you rotting halfway across the world.

Now IN MY ROOM

O my Love

I found You again

I went out

for a pack of cigarettes

and there You were

I bowed to everyone

and they rejoiced with me

I lost myself

in the eyes of a dog

who loved You

The heat lifted me up

The traffic bounced me

naked into bed

with a book about You

and a bottle of cold water

THE DARKNESS ENTERS

The darkness enters my hotel room

like a curtain coming through a curtain

billowing into different shapes of darkness

wings here a gas mask there,

simple things and double things

I sit upright on the edge of the bed

and I impede the falling darkness

with my many personalities

just as a high spiked fence

with the tips painted gold

interferes with the French rain

For a number of luminous hours

it is a standoff

Often during this highly charged segment

of my usually monotonous life

a woman enters the room with a pass-key

and in small ways manages to communicate

that we might have lived our lives together

had circumstances been otherwise

I like it especially

when she addresses me in the familiar form

of her incomprehensible language

but always in the back of my mind

I know the important moments

are on their way

and I am that high iron fence

with the spikes painted gold

holding off the inevitable

SUGGESTIONS

“We are college girls from Ontario.”

“What part of Ontario?”

“We don’t know Ontario. We were told to say we were from there.”

“I see.”

They moved purposefully around the kitchen, lighting and extinguishing the gas range, checking the pilot lights, extracting pots from crowded cabinets, kneeling in front of the crisper, but no food was actually cooked or served.

“We don’t really know how to cook.”

“I see.”

“We are really nothing but suggestions. Our bodies end where our clothes begin. There’s nothing underneath.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“Yes, we were told to practise modesty, to make you laugh and smile, and not to bewilder you with fluids and nakedness.”

“Will this improve the evening?”

“It will. It will delight you.”

“I submit myself to your good intentions.”

They each took one of his arms, and they folded themselves against him, and pressed their heads against his chest.

“We love you.”

His tears came and they wiped them away with their colourful bandanas.

“I’m hungry.”

“So are we! Let’s go to a restaurant in Montreal, a city, we have heard, which has more restaurants per block than even Rio. We’ll go out every night, except when you don’t feel like it. Then we’ll order in.”

EVEN NOW

I did not know

how simple you are

how generous

I tried to capture you

with rhymes

and erotic

suggestions

Even now

you yawn

in my heart

bored and alone

rubbing ointments

all over your body

and touching yourself

while I tarry

ANOTHER POET

Another poet will have to say

how much I love you

I’m too busy now with the Arabian Sea

and its perverse repetitions

of white and grey

I’m tired of telling you

and so are the trees

and so are the deck chairs

Yes, I have given up a lot of things

in the last few minutes

including the great honour

of saying I love you

I’ve become thin and beautiful again

I shaved off my grandfather’s beard

I’m loose in the belt

and tight in the jowl

Crazy young beauties

still covered with the grime

of ashrams and shrines

examine their imagination

in an old man’s room

Boys change their lives

in the wake of my gait

anxious to study

elusive realities

under my hypnotic indifference

The brain of the whale

crowns the edge of the water

like a lurid sunset

but all I ever see

is you or You

or you in You

or You in you

Confusing to everyone else

but to me

total employment

I introduce

the young to the young

They dance away in misery

while I conspire

with the Arabian Sea

to create

an ugly silence

which gets the ocean

off my back

and more important

lets another poet say

how much I love you

PARDON ME

Pardon me, lords and ladies,

if I do not think of myself

as the disease.

Pardon me if I receive the Holy Spirit

without telling you about it.

Pardon me,

Commissars of the West,

if you do not think

I have suffered enough.

HER FRIEND

she doesn’t know

her friend has come

she won’t be able

to write down

anything he says

he won’t have a place

in her notebook

along with Kabir

and the Theravadins

many years later

she will remember

sitting with an old man

a curious nakedness

of thought

between them

that nakedness

that transparency

will lead her home

IT SEEMED THE BETTER WAY

It seemed the better way

When first I heard him speak

But now it’s much too late

To turn the other cheek

It sounded like the truth

It seemed the better way

You’d have to be a fool

To choose the meek today

I wonder what it was

I wonder what it meant

He seemed to touch on love

But then he touched on death

Better hold my tongue

Better learn my place

Lift my glass of blood

Try to say the Grace

THE GREAT DIVIDE

I never liked the way you loved

So devious, so dated

But still I fasted like a monk

And prayed to see you naked

I’d see you hurting everyone

A government of suffering

I’d tell myself ‘Thy Will Be Done

My will it counts for nothing’

I drank a lot I lost my job

I lived like nothing mattered

And you, you never came across

You never even answered

It was a blind and broken time

And kindness was forbidden

I guess I tried to hitch a ride

From acid to religion

But every guiding light was gone

And every good direction

The book of love I read was wrong

It had a happy ending

But when the system had been shocked

Beyond all recognition

The simple things that I’d forgot

Resumed their sweet position

I thought I saw you with a child

I thought I heard you weeping

And all the garden round you wild

And safely in your keeping

I don’t recall what happened next

I kept you at a distance

But tangled in the knot of sex

My punishment was lifted

Your remedies beneath my hand

Your fingers in my hair

The kisses on our lips began

That ended everywhere

And when I gathered up to leave

You drew me to your side

To be as Adam was to Eve

Before the Great Divide

And fastened here we cannot move

Except to one another

We spread and drown as lilies do

From nowhere to the centre

And here I cannot lift a hand

To trace the lines of beauty

But lines are traced and love is glad

To come and go so freely

And here no sin can be confessed

No sinner be forgiven

It’s written that the law must rest

Before the law is written

And here the silence is erased

The background all dismantled

Your beauty cannot be compared

No mirror here, no shadow

But now it comes, a grazing wind

Aimless and serene

It wounds me as I part your lips

It wounds us in between

And now the wars can start anew

The torture and the laughter

We cry aloud, as humans do

Before the truth, and after

I don’t know how it’s going to end

You always left that open

But oh, you are the only friend

I never thought of knowing

I AM NOW ABLE

I am now able

to sleep twenty hours a day

The remaining four

are spent

telephoning a list

of important people

in order

to say goodnight

Jikan

who was born

to make men laugh

bows his head

THE FLOW

You have been told to

“go with the flow”

but as you know

from your studies,

there is no flow,

nor is there actually

any coming or going.

These are merely

helpful concepts

for the novice monk.

You can start smoking again,

and what is called “your death”

and what is called “your life”

you can watch now

through the eyes of wisdom.

This is why

the Sages of Japan

named their cigarettes

“Hope” and “Peace”

and “Peace Light” and “Short Hope”

and “Short Hope Light.”

A NOTE TO THE CHINESE READER

Dear Reader,

Thank you for coming to this book. It is an honour, and a surprise, to have the frenzied thoughts of my youth expressed in Chinese characters. I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the translator and the publishers in bringing this curious work to your attention. I hope you will find it useful or amusing.

When I was young, my friends and I read and admired the old Chinese poets. Our ideas of love and friendship, of wine and distance, of poetry itself, were much affected by those ancient songs. Much later, during the years when I practised as a Zen monk under the guidance of my teacher Kyozan Joshu Roshi, the thrilling sermons of Lin Chi (Rinzai) were studied every day. So you can understand, Dear Reader, how privileged I feel to be able to graze, even for a moment, and with such meagre credentials, on the outskirts of your tradition.

This is a difficult book, even in English, if it is taken too seriously. May I suggest that you skip over the parts you don’t like? Dip into it here and there. Perhaps there will be a passage, or even a page, that resonates with your curiosity. After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. In any case, I thank you for your interest in this odd collection of jazz riffs, pop-art jokes, religious kitsch and muffled prayer, an interest which indicates, to my thinking, a rather reckless, though very touching, generosity on your part.

Beautiful Losers was written outside, on a table set among the rocks, weeds and daisies, behind my house on Hydra, an island in the Aegean Sea. I lived there many years ago. It was a blazing hot summer. I never covered my head. What you have in your hands is more of a sunstroke than a book.

Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time.

THE FAITH

The sea so deep and blind

The sun, the wild regret

The club, the wheel, the mind,

0 love, aren’t you tired yet?

The blood, the soil, the faith

These words you can’t forget

Your vow, your holy place

O love, aren’t you tired yet?

A cross on every hill

A star, a minaret

So many graves to fill

O love, aren’t you tired yet?

The sea so deep and blind

Where still the sun must set

And time itself unwind

O love, aren’t you tired yet?

HERE IT IS

Here is your crown

and your seal and rings

and here is your love

for all things

Here is your cart

your cardboard and piss

and here is your love

for all of this

May everyone live

and may everyone die

Hello, my love

and my love, Goodbye

Here is your wine

and your drunken fall

and here is your love

your love for it all

Here is your sickness

your bed and your pan

and here is your love

for the woman, the man

And here is the night

the night has begun

and here is your death

in the heart of your son

and here is the dawn

(until death do us part)

and here is your death

in your daughter’s heart

And here you are hurried

and here you are gone

and here is the love

that it’s all built upon

Here is your cross

your nails and your hill

and here is your love

that lists where it will

May everyone live

and may everyone die

Hello, my love

and my love, Goodbye

THERE FOR YOU

When it all went down

And the pain came through

I get it now

I was there for you

Don’t ask me how

I know it’s true

I get it now

I was there for you

I make my plans

Like I always do

But when I look back

I was there for you

I walk the streets

Like I used to do

And I freeze with fear

But I’m there for you

I see my life

In full review

It was never me

It was always you

You sent me here

You sent me there

Breaking things

I can’t repair

Making objects

Out of thought

Making more

By thinking not

Eating food

And drinking wine

A body that

I thought was mine

Dressed as arab

Dressed as jew

O mask of iron

I was there for you

Moods of glory

Moods so foul

The world comes through

A bloody towel

And death is old

But it’s always new

I freeze with fear

And I’m there for you

I see it clear

I always knew

It was never me

I was there for you

I was there for you

My darling one

And by your law

It all was done

Don’t ask me how

I know it’s true

I get it now

I was there for you

A PROMISE

I will never

return

the Holy Grail

to its

“rightful owners.”

REPORT TO R.S.B.

Peace did not come into my life.

My life escaped

and peace was there.

Often I bump into my life,

trying to catch its breath,

pay a bill,

or tolerate the news,

tripping as usual

over the cables

of someone’s beauty –

My little life:

so loyal,

so devoted to its obscure purposes –

And, I hasten to report,

doing fine without me.

IRVING AND ME AT THE HOSPITAL

He stood up for Nietzsche

I stood up for Christ

He stood up for victory

I stood up for less

I loved to read his verses

He loved to hear my song

We never had much interest

In who was right or wrong

His boxer’s hands were shaking

He struggled with his pipe

Imperial Tobacco

Which I helped him light

– after the photo by Laszlo

BECAUSE OF A FEW SONGS

Because of a few songs

wherein I spoke of their mystery,

women have been

exceptionally kind

to my old age.

They make a secret place

in their busy lives

and they take me there.

They become naked

in their different ways

and they say,

“Look at me, Leonard

look at me one last time.”

Then they bend over the bed

and cover me up

like a baby that is shivering.

THE LETTERS

You never liked to get

The letters that I sent.

But now you’ve got the gist

Of what my letters meant.

You’re reading them again.

The ones you didn’t burn.

You press them to your lips,

My pages of concern.

I said there’d been a flood.

I said there’s nothing left.

I hoped that you would come.

I gave you my address.

Your story was so long,

The plot was so intense,

It took you years to cross

The lines of self-defence.

The wounded forms appear:

the loss, the full extent;

and simple kindness here,

the solitude of strength.

You walk into my room.

You sit there at my desk,

Begin your letter to

The one who’s coming next.

KITCHEN TABLE

The same useless thoughts arise

but no one claims them –

Loneliness seizes the frame

and shakes away hope

but no one is hopeless

no one is lonely –

The intricate preparations

for the next moment

direct you

to read this now –

Surrendered to the One

who placed me here

I sit at the very table

where these songs began

some forty years ago –

busy as a bee

in the solitude

– Hydra, 1999

GRAVITY

I never tried to see your face,

Nor did I want to know

The details of some lower place

Where I would have to go.

But love is strong as gravity,

And everyone must fall.

At first it’s from the apple tree,

And then the western wall.

At first it’s from the apple tree,

And then the western wall.

And then from you and then from me

And then from one and all

THE SUN

I’ve been to the sun

It’s nothing special

A place of violence

Much like our own

The sun said

I am an open book

Be patient

I love the way

The sun speaks

It is so calm and honest

Except when seized

By its own misfortunes

You will find

That everything happens

The same way

Here and there

The solar winds

Are something else

No one masters them

No one really

Navigates them

You survive them

Or you are never

Heard from again

Go LITTLE BOOK

Go little book

And hide

And be ashamed

Of your irrelevance

A fluke

Has made you prominent

You were meant

To be discovered

Later

When there are no more

Floods and earthquakes

And holy wars

Go little book

And stop disgracing me

There are serious men

And women in my life

And you have given them

The upper hand

Hide behind

A window

O my dear lighthearted

And transparent

Book

Or crush yourself

Beneath a defeat

But hide

Hide quickly now

And let me hear from you

In our secret code

Which resembles

A bad cough

That dark rattle

Which ignores

The challenges of love

The crystals of perfection

O speak to me

From places

You will find

Go little book

Invite me there

HOSPITALITY

drinking cognac

with the old man –

his exquisite hospitality

in the shack by the river –

that is, no hospitality

just emptying the bottle into my glass

and filling my plate

and falling asleep

when it was time to go

THE CENTRE

When I am at the centre

of my unrequited love

I cannot hold it as an object

It has no sharp edges

to torture anyone

I breathe the fragrance

of the longing

and the longing

has no proprietor

“O my love” embraces

the great wide sky

as the night picks through

the constellations

lifting necklace

after dripping necklace

for the delight

of Leonard’s true beloved

“0 my love” cries out

from every pore of snow

and the forest answers

from a great height:

“O my love”

And one heart appears

and one heart dissolves

and they clasp in the place

where I am held up

in the storm

And I walk to you

on the waves of desire

walk across the distance

with something new to tell you

about your beauty

your good legs

and your relentless absence

YOUR RELENTLESS APPETITE FOR NEW PERSPECTIVES

When You wanted

to see her

in a different light

You placed her

in my arms

When You wanted

to vanish

in a sigh of relief

You drew down her lips

to mine

O Nameless Subject

of all activity

You have given me a song

for my ghostly life

How deep is Your longing

for Yourself

how sublimely overlooked

We kneel in gratitude

as the movements in love

disperse our sweet intentions

across the fictions

of Companionship –

two of the creatures

which You named Me

BETTER TO BE LOST

It is better when I’m lost

and the towns flow by

like television

and you want to be an artist

and draw the waitress’s lips

It is better when I wake up

alone in the cold sauna

and get to know the wood again

the red wood, the cedar

the old oaken bucket

the old rugged cross

O my children it is better

to be lost when you are

this poisoned father

at the woman’s banquet of love

and I did not take you

to hunt the bear

or spear the fish

I did not spirit you away

from the intrigue

to the forest green

where I slept with

a person named Sahara

beside The Devil’s River

and I knew how to put up

a tent in the wind

It is better to be lost

to fall asleep according

to the terrors of CNN

dead drunk on red wine

digging for the sunlight

in the German documentary

that never turns into English

It is better to be the blood

inside my own hand

with its own sweet life

its innocent joyous burden

of service

O thank you dear sweet

loyal blood of my hand

I promise never to raise you

again in anger

INSIDE OUR LOVE

I want to love you now

I want to love you then

I want to love you never

And then begin again

All the tassels of my belt

Go flying in the sky

When you bend down to laugh at me

From your place on high

I want to be the fool

The one you send away

After you have used him up

Every second day

I want to be the rose

You beckon with a yawn

Limping on a thorny crutch

Across the burning lawn

See what you have done to me

As if you give a shit

I used to live behind a line

But now I’m over it

I won’t come back to say goodbye

I’ll never leave your side

Until I am the other man

And you are someone’s bride

Sit down on my memory

When you are in pain

When you are in pleasure

Sit down on it again

Thank you for your courtesy

And for your drunken kiss

I’m drunker than you’ll ever be

I hate to tell you this

And every night’s cemented tight

Until you strike and rise

Against me like a tidal flood

To crack the wall of lies

And push me down forever

To places where I find

The fossils of my brotherhood

The smooth ones and the spined

And then a holy moment comes

With crisp sobriety:

I see that we are meant for chains

Though every atom’s free

I see that we are meant for chains

Tho’ every atom’s free

And even beauty meets an edge

As one can plainly see

Then summer has your golden hair

And autumn has your ghost

And we are at a juicy feast

Where no one is the host

Then we begin to form again

It takes a little while

I circle round your privacy

For many a lonesome mile

HALF THE WORLD

Every night she’d come to me

I’d cook for her, I’d pour her tea

She was in her thirties then

had made some money, lived with men

We’d lay us down to give and get

beneath the white mosquito net

And since no counting had begun

we lived a thousand years in one

The candles burned, the moon went down

the polished hill, the milky town

transparent, weightless, luminous,

uncovering the two of us

on that fundamental ground,

where love’s unwilled, unleashed, unbound

and half the perfect world is found

CHEATER

I cheat when I make love

She thinks it’s great

She shows me stuff

that you’d only show

to a cheater

THE FLOOD

The flood it is gathering

Soon it will move

Across every valley

Against every roof

The body will drown

And the soul will break loose

I write all this down

But I don’t have the proof

– Sinai, 1973

Index of Titles / drawings, first lines

a private gaze 96

Alexandra Leaving 60

All My News 42

Alone at Last 173

angry at 11 pm 134

Another Christopher 132

Another Poet 186

Anything Which Refers 176

Argument 130

back in montreal 172

Backyard 150

Basket 51

Beach at Kamini, The 80

Because of a Few Songs 208

Best, The 141

Better 11

Better to Be Lost 220

Body of Loneliness 40

Boogie Street 64

Book of Longing, The 1

but turn me on my side… 224

Butter Dish 129

By the Rivers Dark 53

Centre, The 218

Cheater 228

Cigarette Issue, The 71

Clockwork 142

Cold, The 84

Collapse of Zen, The 19

Correct Attitude, The 157

Cross, The 123

Darkness Enters, The 182

Dear Diary 83

dear roshi… 23

Delay 101

Disturbed This Morning 39

Drunk Is Gender-Free, The 143

During the Day 81

Dusko’s Taverna 1967 75

Early Morning at Mt. Baldy 21

Early Questions 45

Even Now 185

Even Some of My Own 166

Faith, The 198

Faithless Wife, The 147

falling in love with you 118

First of All 122

Flood, The 229

Flow, The 194

Food Tastes Good 48

for all my art… 155

Fun 49

furthermore, you do not have… 203

Go Little Book 216

Goal, The 153

Good Germans 94

Gravity 212

Great Divide, The 191

Great Event, The 108

Half the World 226

Her Friend 188

Here It Is 199

His Master’s Voice 3

Historic Claremont Village 38

Hospitality 217

How Could I Have Doubted 106

I Am Now Able 193

i believe that you are standing… 52

i copied time 223

i guess it’s better to start a war 189

I Miss My Mother 72

i never found the girl 35

I Wrote for Love 89

If I Could Help You 95

if you are young… 59

If You Knew 88

Inside Our Love 221

Irving and Me at the Hospital 205

It Seemed the Better Way 190

Jana Thinks of John 177

jikan who pretended to be a poet… 184

just to have been one of them… 36

Kitchen Table 211

Laughter in the Pantheon 82

Layton’s Question 87

Leaving Mt. Baldy 22

Letters, The 209

Life of Errands, A 66

Limited Degree, A 65

Looking Away 165

Looking Through My Dreams 179

Lorca Lives 90

Love Itself 54

Lovesick Monk, The 13

Luckiest Man in the World, The 24

Magic Cure, A 85

Medicine 17

Mercy Returns Me 91

Mission 68

Mist of Pornography, The 98

monk’s head, artist’s proof 27

Montreal Afternoon 102

Moon, The 46

Moving Into a Period 34

Much Later 131

My Baby Wasn’t There 74

My Consort 37

my guitar… 195

My Life in Robes 2

My Mother Asleep 137

My Mother Is Not Dead 139

My Redeemer 121

My Time 178

Need the Speed 105

Never Mind 144

Never Once 162

Nightingale 146

Not a Jew 158

Note to the Chinese Reader, A 196

Now In My Room 181

oh and one more thing 167

Old Automat on 23rd St., The 77

On the Path 120

One of My Letters 5

one of those days… 116

only one thing made him happy… 210

Opened My Eyes 156

Other Writers 15

Pardon Me 187

paris again… 78

Paris Sky, The 109

Party Was Over Then Too, The 25

pretending to dig in 227

Promise, A 202

Puerto Rican Song, A 63

Puppets 160

Reading to the Prime Minister 104

Religious Statues 69

Remote, The 97

Report to R.S.B. 204

Robert Appears Again 138

Roshi 16

Roshi at 89 4

Seisen Is Dancing 33

Separated 133

Shirley 140

sit still… 206

So Do You 180

Something from the Early Seventies 125

soon there will be no one… 214

Sorrows of the Elderly 171

S.O.S. 1995 7

Split 58

Stanzas for H.M. 113

still looking at the girls… 207

Story Thus Far, The 110

stunned and still not suffering 174

Suggestions 183

Sun, The 213

Sweet Time 47

Sweetest Little Song, The 111

Takanawa Prince Hotel Bar 31

taxes children lost pussy… 175

the face can be composed… 41

the inner sweetness of the man… 117

the lamp in room 3 225

the promise of a youthful shirt 100

the road is too long 215

the truth of the line… 86

There for You 201

There Is a Moment 145

these portraits are far behind my… 62

Thing 112

Third Invention, The 136

this book will begin to speak… 119

This Is It 28

this is the best way to do it 164

This Isn’t China 30

this mood has nothing to do with you 161

Thousand Kisses Deep 56

Thousands 73

Tired 124

Titles 159

To a Young Nun 14

Too Old 79

Tradition, The 92

Travelling Light #31 149

True Self 18

Unbecoming 76

vibrant, but dead 152

Voice Dictating in a Plane Over Europe 107

we are not convinced… 50

we will all be airbrushed 128

we will not be staying… 197

What Baffled Me 169

What Did It 70

When I Drink 9

When I Went Out 151

Who Do You Really Remember 163

Why I Love France 115

Wind Moves, The 170

Wish Me Luck 67

Work in Progress 154

worried of course. 200

You Are Right, Sahara 44

you don’t want to go out any more 135

You Have Loved Enough 55

You’d Sing Too 6

Your Heart 168

Your Relentless Appetite for New Perspectives 219

Acknowledgments

Many of these poems and drawings first appeared in The Leonard Cohen Files (www.leonardcohenfiles.com), a remarkable website out of Finland mastered by Jarkko Arjatsalo, with the technical assistance of his son Rauli. I am deeply grateful to the Arjatsalo family, and to the webmasters Marie Mazur, Tomislav Sakic, and Patrice Clos for their extraordinary efforts on behalf of my work.

Some of the pieces in this book became lyrics for songs that Sharon Robinson and I wrote and sang together. They can be heard on the Sony CD called Ten New Songs.

The Walrus magazine, out of Toronto, graciously published some poems and drawings, as did Oris, out of Zagreb, with Croatian translations.

I heard many interesting and precise ideas, which later I blurred into verse, while in the precious company of Kyozan Joshu Roshi, and Ramesh S. Balsekar. Their compelling concepts were so imperfectly grasped that I cannot be accused either of stealing or absorbing them.

I thank my editors in Toronto and New York, Ellen Seligman and Dan Halpern, for the wide hospitality of their houses, and Marilyn Biderman of M&S for carefully presenting this book to publishers elsewhere.

I thank Sam Feldman, Steve Macklam and Michelle Findlay for helping me across the street.

I thank Adam and Lorca Cohen and Jessica Murphy for their Sabbath company.

I thank my sister Esther Cohen for her exuberant support.

I want to express my gratitude to Robert Kory, Michelle Rice, and Anjani Thomas for their loyalty and their kind and skilful navigations.

And to Anjani, again.

Thank you, Teachers

Thank you, Everyone

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Book of Longing

THE BOOK OF LONGING

MY LIFE IN ROBES

HIS MASTER’S VOICE

ROSHI AT 89

ONE OF MY LETTERS

YOU’D SING TOO

S.O.S. 1995

WHEN I DRINK

BETTER

THE LOVESICK MONK

TO A YOUNG NUN

OTHER WRITERS

ROSHI

MEDICINE

TRUE SELF

THE COLLAPSE OF ZEN

EARLY MORNING AT MT. BALDY

LEAVING MT. BALDY

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

THE PARTY WAS OVER THEN TOO

THIS IS IT

THIS ISN’T CHINA

TAKANAWA PRINCE HOTEL BAR

SEISEN IS DANCING

MOVING INTO A PERIOD

MY CONSORT

HISTORIC CLAREMONT VILLAGE

DISTURBED THIS MORNING

BODY OF LONELINESS

ALL MY NEWS

YOU ARE RIGHT, SAHARA

EARLY QUESTIONS

THE MOON

SWEET TIME

FOOD TASTES GOOD

FUN

BASKET

BY THE RIVERS DARK

LOVE ITSELF

YOU HAVE LOVED ENOUGH

THOUSAND KISSES DEEP

SPLIT

ALEXANDRA LEAVING

A PUERTO RICAN SONG

BOOGIE STREET

A LIMITED DEGREE

A LIFE OF ERRANDS

WISH ME LUCK

MISSION

RELIGIOUS STATUES

WHAT DID IT

THE CIGARETTE ISSUE

I MISS MY MOTHER

THOUSANDS

MY BABY WASN’T THERE

DUSKO’S TAVERNA 1967

UNBECOMING

THE OLD AUTOMAT ON 23RD ST.

TOO OLD

THE BEACH AT KAMINI

DURING THE DAY

LAUGHTER IN THE PANTHEON

DEAR DIARY

THE COLD

A MAGIC CURE

LAYTON’S QUESTION

IF YOU KNEW

I WROTE FOR LOVE

LORCA LIVES

MERCY RETURNS ME

THE TRADITION

GOOD GERMANS

IF I COULD HELP YOU

THE REMOTE

THE MIST OF PORNOGRAPHY

DELAY

MONTREAL AFTERNOON

READING TO THE PRIME MINISTER

NEED THE SPEED

HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED

VOICE DICTATING IN A PLANE OVER EUROPE

THE GREAT EVENT

THE PARIS SKY

THE STORY THUS FAR

THE SWEETEST LITTLE SONG

THING

STANZAS FOR H.M.

WHY I LOVE FRANCE

ON THE PATH

MY REDEEMER

FIRST OF ALL

THE CROSS

TIRED

SOMETHING FROM THE EARLY SEVENTIES

BUTTER DISH

ARGUMENT

MUCH LATER

ANOTHER CHRISTOPHER

SEPARATED

THE THIRD INVENTION

MY MOTHER ASLEEP

ROBERT APPEARS AGAIN

MY MOTHER IS NOT DEAD

SHIRLEY

THE BEST

CLOCKWORK

THE DRUNK IS GENDER-FREE

NEVER MIND

THERE IS A MOMENT

NIGHTINGALE

THE FAITHLESS WIFE

TRAVELLING LIGHT #31

BACKYARD

WHEN I WENT OUT

THE GOAL

WORK IN PROGRESS

OPENED MY EYES

THE CORRECT ATTITUDE

NOT A JEW

TITLES

PUPPETS

NEVER ONCE

WHO DO YOU REALLY REMEMBER

LOOKING AWAY

EVEN SOME OF MY OWN

YOUR HEART

WHAT BAFFLED ME

THE WIND MOVES

SORROWS OF THE ELDERLY

ALONE AT LAST

ANYTHING WHICH REFERS

JANA THINKS OF JOHN

MY TIME

LOOKING THROUGH MY DREAMS

So Do You

Now IN MY ROOM

THE DARKNESS ENTERS

SUGGESTIONS

EVEN NOW

ANOTHER POET

PARDON ME

HER FRIEND

IT SEEMED THE BETTER WAY

THE GREAT DIVIDE

I AM NOW ABLE

THE FLOW

A NOTE TO THE CHINESE READER

THE FAITH

HERE IT IS

THERE FOR YOU

A PROMISE

REPORT TO R.S.B.

IRVING AND ME AT THE HOSPITAL

BECAUSE OF A FEW SONGS

THE LETTERS

KITCHEN TABLE

GRAVITY

THE SUN

Go LITTLE BOOK

HOSPITALITY

THE CENTRE

YOUR RELENTLESS APPETITE FOR NEW PERSPECTIVES

BETTER TO BE LOST

INSIDE OUR LOVE

THE LAMP IN ROOM 3

HALF THE WORLD

CHEATER

THE FLOOD

Index of Titles / drawings, first lines

Acknowledgments